Macro Voices · Hedge Fund Manager Erik Townsend

MacroVoices #507 Michael Howell: Is This The end of the Everything Bubble

November 20, 2025·1 hr 12 min·5 clips

Howell tells Eric Townsend he is not reading enough into the U.S. debt maturity wall — on top of refinancing, another $2 trillion in new debt arrives annually.

The question is liquidity. Eric Townsend ties equity topping worries to Michael Howell's 65-month global liquidity cycle and what it could mean for the next asset leader. The cycle gives the segment its frame, but the action is in refinancing. Howell's point, as the excerpt presents it, is that liquidity pressure has moved out of the background and into the machinery that keeps debt rolling. Repo markets are where the strain shows up. He points to the gap between market-based repo rates and administered Fed funds as a sign that refinancing is getting tight. The pattern matters more than any one print. A single divergence can be noise. Repeated stress, with debt refinancing demand running into scarce liquidity, is harder to wave away. Howell says the usual relationship has flipped. Collateralized repo rates would normally sit a little below Fed funds, but here they are trading well above the administered rate. That is the warning light. In Howell's reading, the Fed's recent rate cut has been partly cancelled out by market pricing. Control is still there, but less clean at the edge. Bank reserves are the test case. Howell links repo pressure to reserve adequacy, failed trades, and the money-market version of the broader liquidity story. Then the equity call follows. If the liquidity cycle is turning and refinancing pressure keeps building, equity outperformance starts to look tired. Commodities are the next candidate. Townsend says Howell expects commodity outperformance ahead, while Patrick Ceresna is set to map the rate view into a SOFR futures option spread.

As heard by us

A liquidity-cycle look at equity leadership and the next market rotation.

Macro Voices spends this hour on a familiar question with real market weight: whether the bull run in equities is running out of room. Michael Howell returns to walk through the 65-month global liquidity cycle and what it may mean for who leads next.

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Why you'd press play

Why the 65-month global liquidity cycle may be turning, with equity outperformance probably winding down.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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