Peter’s Blog

Seasonally Adjusted Money Supply in April fell $167B. As the chart below shows, this is now the 9th consecutive monthly drop. This is also the second-largest drop of all time, behind only last month.

Seasonally Adjusted Money Supply in March fell $257B. As the chart below shows, this is now the 8th consecutive monthly drop. Going back to the 1970s, the drop in March was actually the biggest on record on an absolute and relative basis.

The seasonally adjusted Money Supply in February fell $121B and the Money Supply in January was revised from positive $31B to -$142B. This is a major revision and now means the Money Supply has fallen for seven straight months.

The seasonally adjusted money supply in January increased by $31 billion. This was the first increase in the money supply in five months.

The better-than-expected non-farm payroll report for January along with the smaller interest rate hike delivered by the Federal Reserve at its February meeting increased optimism that the central bank can bring price inflation back to 2% without tanking the economy. But the shrinking money supply undercuts this soft landing narrative.

For the first time ever, the money supply contracted on an annual basis in 2022. The seasonally adjusted Money Supply in December was negative for a fifth consecutive month, coming in at -$147B. This was the largest monthly contraction in M2 going back to 1959. This type of contraction typically does not happen!

The 13-week annualized non-seasonally adjusted money supply growth rate is crashing at a time when it typically moves up. The market is becoming increasingly more vulnerable to a major event in the weeks or months ahead. Let’s take a look at the data…

Seasonally Adjusted Money Supply in October was negative for a third consecutive month, coming in at -$88B. This came on the heels of the largest drop in Money Supply ever last month.

Money Supply shrunk last month by $129B, the largest monthly fall ever going back to 1959. April and June also set records at the time from a gross change perspective. From a percentage amount, Feb. 1970 had been the largest contraction ever (-6.5% annualized), but the current month beat that number at -6.9% annualized.

Money Supply growth was barely positive in August at $2B and sits well below the $233B seen last year. As the chart below shows, Money Supply growth has collapsed since February. Last year started with five straight months above $200B, whereas 2022 has only seen one month above $100B and that was January.