Why and when the markets stopped caring about the Russia-Ukraine conflict? A short thread🧵

The news coming in from Ukraine remains concerning with huge losses and humanitarian crisis.

But for the last 10 days the markets seems to 'Not Care' and react to the news.

Read why

Markets become very jittery if they can sense a large financial panic because of an external event.

One gauge to measure what the market is pricing-in is the funding stress indicator.

For instance, the FRA-OIS spread in US measures the funding stress in interbank markets.
The FRA-OIS spread, which measures the gap between the U.S three-month forward rate agreement and the overnight index swap rate, is an indicator similar to the TED Spread.

TED spread gained a large analyst following during the global financial crisis in 2008.
The FRA/OIS spread expanded from under 5bps to 38bps since Russia Ukraine crisis began.

The same spread had jumped to 80 from 10 during the COVID crisis scare before US Fed and other central banks stepped in.

Take a look at the graph.

What does this mean?
Equity, bonds and currency markets are most sensitive to problems in interbank markets. Why?

Because interbank markets runs financial markets to a very degree. From margin payment in f&o segment, to short term credit, to credit for economy ....
..to the ability of banks to rollover overnight credit and remain solvent depends on this market.

For instance the US Fed had to step in during the COVID crisis with very large reverse repo deals to maintain the interbank market. Similar trends played out during GFC 2008.
The initial scare when Russia-Ukraine conflict broke out was that a very large section of commodity traders, firms and users will not be able to remain solvent or honor their margins in forwards & futures markets.

This led to a very large uptick in the 'stress indicator'.
Since 10th Mar'22, the FRA-OIS spread began a descent and has declined to levels of 22 from the elevated readings of 38 in early March.

This is no way grantees that the crisis is over but it does indicate that markets assumes this event wouldn't morph into a full blow crisis.
What are the other similar indicators telling us?

1. Crude Oil a backwardation has declined form a peak of 35 to 15
2. A number of commodities like aluminum, nickel have declined 20% or more after going parabolic.
3. VIX (Volatility) indices have declined appreciably globally
How to make sense of this now?

Keep tracking how the FRA-OIS spread moves and the other indicators mentioned in last tweet.

A further slowdown will mean that the event is entirely priced in for the short term.

A reversal will hit the markets again with volatility.
There are a plethora of similar concurrent indicators available to gauge market mood. Most of them move together and can confirm or disprove a hypothesis.

Keep tracking these indicators during these unprecedented events to make better decisions.

More on such indicators later...
P.S.

Keep track of what bond markets are saying.

Look how yield curve has collapsed from where it was 6 months ago to where it is today.

There is a remarkable compression which = Slower growth

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Rig Ved 1.36.7

To do a Namaskaar or bow before someone means that you are humble or without pride and ego. This means that we politely bow before you since you are better than me. Pranipaat(प्राणीपात) also means the same that we respect you without any vanity.

1/9


Surrendering False pride is Namaskaar. Even in devotion or bhakti we say the same thing. We want to convey to Ishwar that we have nothing to offer but we leave all our pride and offer you ourselves without any pride in our body. You destroy all our evil karma.

2/9

We bow before you so that you assimilate us and make us that capable. Destruction of our evils and surrender is Namaskaar. Therefore we pray same thing before and after any big rituals.

3/9

तं घे॑मि॒त्था न॑म॒स्विन॒ उप॑ स्व॒राज॑मासते ।
होत्रा॑भिर॒ग्निं मनु॑षः॒ समिं॑धते तिति॒र्वांसो॒ अति॒ स्रिधः॑॥

Translation :

नमस्विनः - To bow.

स्वराजम् - Self illuminating.

तम् - His.

घ ईम् - Yours.

इत्था - This way.

उप - Upaasana.

आसते - To do.

स्त्रिधः - For enemies.

4/9

अति तितिर्वांसः - To defeat fast.

मनुषः - Yajman.

होत्राभिः - In seven numbers.

अग्निम् - Agnidev.

समिन्धते - Illuminated on all sides.

Explanation : Yajmans bow(do Namaskaar) before self illuminating Agnidev by making the offerings of Havi.

5/9
A brief analysis and comparison of the CSS for Twitter's PWA vs Twitter's legacy desktop website. The difference is dramatic and I'll touch on some reasons why.

Legacy site *downloads* ~630 KB CSS per theme and writing direction.

6,769 rules
9,252 selectors
16.7k declarations
3,370 unique declarations
44 media queries
36 unique colors
50 unique background colors
46 unique font sizes
39 unique z-indices

https://t.co/qyl4Bt1i5x


PWA *incrementally generates* ~30 KB CSS that handles all themes and writing directions.

735 rules
740 selectors
757 declarations
730 unique declarations
0 media queries
11 unique colors
32 unique background colors
15 unique font sizes
7 unique z-indices

https://t.co/w7oNG5KUkJ


The legacy site's CSS is what happens when hundreds of people directly write CSS over many years. Specificity wars, redundancy, a house of cards that can't be fixed. The result is extremely inefficient and error-prone styling that punishes users and developers.

The PWA's CSS is generated on-demand by a JS framework that manages styles and outputs "atomic CSS". The framework can enforce strict constraints and perform optimisations, which is why the CSS is so much smaller and safer. Style conflicts and unbounded CSS growth are avoided.