I’m a bit late, but I don’t think I am too late
There are 118,751,709,506,931 ways—about 118.75 trillion—to break a $100 bill if you can use all U.S. legal tender coins and bills. This does not include the case where I give you $100 bill and you give me different $100 bill back as change. Otherwise the answer would be 118,751,709,506,932
Short USDCHF @ 0.8060
Stop loss 0.8136
Short EURCHF @ 0.9400
Stop loss 0.9517
Short EURJPY @ 184.80
Stop loss 186.37
09SEP USDCNH call spread
6.7300/6.7400 for 42 CNH pips
Risking 42 to make 58 off 6.7430 spot
10SEP CHFJPY put spread
199/196 for ~37bps off 200.50 spot
Treasury announcement today:
The U.S. Department of the Treasury is increasing, by at least double, the size of liquidity support buyback operations for longer-dated nominal coupon securities (the 10-year to 20-year sector and the 20-year to 30-year sector). The current maximum size of $2 billion per operation will be at least $4 billion per operation.
This change is effective September 9, 2026 and will be in effect for the remainder of this refunding quarter (through November 4, 2026). Treasury will provide more information about future buyback sizes at the next Quarterly Refunding, scheduled for November 4, 2026.
This increase in buyback operation sizes reflects Treasury’s desire to provide greater liquidity support in longer-dated nominal sectors where there is consistent strong sponsorship from market participants, as evidenced by the significant volume of high-quality offers Treasury routinely receives in longer-dated buyback operations.
The U.S. normally communicates significant debt-management changes through the Quarterly Refunding process. Today’s announcement comes August 19, just two weeks after the August refunding, and Treasury is changing the program starting September 9 rather than waiting until November.
This is an unusual move, and I don’t think it’s a fade. The U.S. Treasury/Fed combo has a bit of a credibility problem, so it’s not clear this change in bond buying is a panacea, but in the short-term, it draws a line in the sand for yields. It’s the first sign that Bessent has had enough of the “highest yield on XXX since 2007” headlines and he has reached into his giant, bottomless bag of tools to slow the move. This intervention also increases the odds of more USDJPY interventions as they seem to believe that selling EURJPY will lower back-end yields by stabilizing demand for JGBs.
With the Fed hikes fading, U.S. economic surprises rolling over, and now the U.S. Treasury intervening in the bond market… Selling USD makes a lot of sense to me here. The problem, of course, is that I am very late to the party as many currencies are already way off their lows. I am going to take a shot at short USDCHF because CHF is the most crowded currency short and USDCHF is making a giant head and shoulders.
This trade is pretty simple as we have the NewsPivot of 0.8100 to back into. That’s where USDCHF was when the news came out and so short here (0.8060) with a stop loss at 0.8136 should allow plenty of room. Target 0.7910. This news does not bode well for my USDCNH, but it is okay for my CHFJPY, EURJPY, and EURCHF so far.
China.
Via Tim Power.
Have a $100 day.
These are total number of each denomination across all combinations, so the total number of pennies is in the quadrillions.
Total penny appearances = if you look at every one of those combinations and add up all the pennies used across all of them. So one combination can contribute many pennies, not just one. Example:
$100 = 1 × $50 + 50 × $1 contributes 0 pennies
$100 = 9,995 pennies + 1 nickel contributes 9,995 pennies
When you sum pennies across all combinations, the total can easily be bigger than the number of combinations. In fact, in this case:
Total combinations = 118,751,709,506,931
Total penny appearances = 125,043,766,291,015,060
So, the average number of pennies per valid combination is about 1,053 pennies.
