Tag Archives: bonds

Since the unnecessary destruction brought about by GFC2 in March 2020, there have been two detectable, short run trendline upward moves in nominal Treasury yields. Both were predictably classified across the entire financial media as the guaranteed first steps toward the “inevitable” BOND ROUT!!!! Each has been characterized as the handywork of master monetary tactician Jay Powell. There is some truth underlying, only stripped of all that hyperbole. These backups in...

Most Long-Term Trends Have Not Changed A lot has changed over the last 4 months since the COVID virus started to impact the global economy. Asia was infected first with China at ground zero. Their economy succumbed first with a large part of the country shut down to a degree that can only be accomplished in an authoritarian regime. The rest of Asia responded to the initial outbreak better than the Chinese (and most everywhere else we now know) and generally mitigated...

Back in the middle of 2018, this kind of thing was at least straight forward and intuitive. If there was any confusion, it wasn’t related to the mechanics, rather most people just couldn’t handle the possibility this was real. Jay Powell said inflation, rate hikes, and accelerating growth. Absolutely hawkish across-the-board. And yet, all the way back in the middle of June 2018 the eurodollar curve started to say, hold on a minute. That’s the part which caused so...

The stock market has recovered most of its losses from the March COVID-19 induced sell-off and the enthusiasm with which stocks are being bought – and sold but mostly bought – could lead one to believe that the crisis is over, that the economy has completely or nearly completely recovered. Unfortunately, other markets do not support that notion nor does the available economic data. Of course, markets look forward and there is the possibility that stock market...

Have we entered a new bull market? Was the 35% pullback in the S&P 500 in March the fastest bear market in history? Or is this just a continuation of the bull market that started in 2009, interrupted by a rather large correction? Bull markets and bear markets are about behavior, about the human emotions of fear and greed. While we got a brief bout of fear in March, greed has since overwhelmed all sense, common and otherwise. What we’re seeing in the casino…er,...

Credit card use entails a degree of risk appreciated at the most basic level. Americans had certainly become more comfortable with debt in all its forms over the many decades since the Great Depression, but the regular employment of revolving credit was perhaps the apex of this transformation. Does any commercial package on TV today not include one or more credit card offers? It certainly remains a staple of junk mail. Leaning more and more on credit cards during the...

So, you’re convinced that low rates are powerful stimulus. You believe, like any good standing Economist, that reduced interest costs can only lead to more credit across-the-board. That with more credit will emerge more economic activity and, better, activity of the inflationary variety. A recovery, in other words. Ceteris paribus. What happens, however, if you also believe you’ve been responsible for bringing rates down all across the curve…and then no recovery....

If there’s been one small measure of progress, and a needed one, it has been the mainstream finally pushing commentary into the right category. Back in ’08, during the worst of GFC1 you’d hear it all described as “flight to safety.” That, however, didn’t correctly connote the real nature of what was behind the global economy’s dramatic wreckage. Flight to safety, whether Treasuries or dollars, wasn’t it. Back in March, while “it” was very obvious, even the New...

Count me among the bond vigilantes. On the issue of supply I yield (pun intended) to no one. The US government is the brokest entity humanity has ever conceived – and that was before March 2020. There will be a time, if nothing is done, where this will matter a great deal. That time isn’t today nor is it tomorrow or anytime soon because it’s the demand side which is so confusing and misdirected. Realizing this is true does not cancel your vigilantism. For two years...

After years of futility, he was sure of the answer. The Bank of Japan had spent the better part of the roaring nineties fighting against itself as much as the bubble which had burst at the outset of the decade. Letting fiscal authorities rule the day, Japan’s central bank had largely sat back introducing what it said was stimulus in the form of lower and lower rates. No, stupid, declared Milton Friedman. Lower rates don’t mean stimulus they mean monetary policy has...