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A thawing in China/US tensions could, in our view, help “risky” assets in China for a while by reducing the “China risk premium” that seems to have emerged. But we doubt it would fully reverse the recent underperformance of China’s equity markets relative …
16th November 2023
Investors seem to be banking on a “Goldilocks” US economic environment which, if sustained, might lead to bull markets for most bonds, equities, and currencies. But we think this is a bit optimistic. Financial markets are having a great time since the …
15th November 2023
While past dips in the 10-year Treasury yield since inflation peaked proved to be short lived, we think that yield will continue to fall from here. Investors have taken the softer-than-expected US CPI data for October, published today, as confirmation …
14th November 2023
Moody’s decision to revise down its outlook for the US sovereign credit rating may add to the growing sense that market participants are becoming more worried about the fiscal outlook in the US. So, it is worth assessing to what extent such concerns are …
13th November 2023
Although yesterday’s poorly digested auction of 30Y Treasuries served as a reminder that the outlook for fiscal policy has the potential to undermine US long-dated government bonds, we still think their yields will end 2024 lower than they are now given …
10th November 2023
While the US dollar has bounced back a bit this week, its struggles over the past month or so are in some ways similar to the lead up to its sharp fall in Q4 of last year . But we think a comparable slide over the coming months looks unlikely . After …
9th November 2023
Given our pessimistic view of the economy in the US, we think that equities there will fare quite poorly in the near term. But the biggest components of the S&P 500 might hold up better. Equities have bounced back sharply over the past ten days, with the …
8th November 2023
Despite some differences in the monetary policy outlooks for Australia and the US, we doubt 10-year yields in the two economies will diverge much. Earlier today the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) made what looks likely to be one of the last moves in the …
7th November 2023
We think the risks to the “goldilocks” view being discounted in markets are skewed towards a bigger slowdown in the US than is currently discounted, driving credit spreads up over the coming months. The market reaction to data in the US last week, rounded …
6th November 2023
We think today’s big moves in markets in the wake of October’s US Employment Report are a sign of things to come over the next twelve months or so. More evidence that the labour market in the US is cooling and that wage growth there is moderating (see …
3rd November 2023
The yields of UK government bonds (Gilts) have dropped back in recent days, and we think that they will fall further over the next year or so, even if they settle far above their post-pandemic lows. UK government bond yields have fallen a bit further …
2nd November 2023
The Treasury’s Quarterly Refunding announcement (QRA) today may have eased some upward pressure on Treasury term premia, but we think these premia are unlikely to fall further over the coming years. Although the Treasury today increased the auction size …
1st November 2023
As is often the case, it is hard to know just what to make of the Bank of Japan’s latest policy announcement. Our sense is that the resulting rise in Japanese government bond yields is more likely to endure than the sharp fall in the yen. To recap, the …
31st October 2023
We expect the fortunes of safe assets to improve over the rest of this year, largely informed by our belief that investors are underestimating how quickly and/or how far central banks will cut interest rates over the next couple of years. And while we …
30th October 2023
A renewed surge in the spreads of private-label commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS), at a time when the spreads of high-yield (HY) corporate bonds have remained fairly subdued (see Chart 1), has attracted little attention in US bond markets amid …
Today’s rebound in Amazon’s share price following news that its sales were better than expected in Q3 has shored up the performance of the ‘Magnificent 7’ in what has otherwise been a tough week for most of them amid a mixed bag of reports, lingering …
27th October 2023
Spreads in Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain have diverged in unusual directions this year, and we doubt that these trends will revert any time soon. As was universally anticipated, the ECB stood pat at its meeting today: policy rates were kept unchanged …
26th October 2023
We expect the US Treasury 10-year/2-year yield spread to turn positive before long, and subsequently rise further over the next year or so. The rapid move towards “disinversion” of the US Treasury yield curve seems to have regained steam today as yields …
25th October 2023
Long-term Treasury yields have risen to new cyclical highs despite a generally weak global economic backdrop. Short-term “technical” indicators also suggest to us the surge in yields may have run its course. PMI survey data released earlier today was …
24th October 2023
Concerns over supply -demand dynamics in the Treasury market seem to be a key factor pushing up Treasury term premia. But we think rising inflation uncertainty among investors has also played a part. The ACM estimate of the 10-year Treasury term premium …
23rd October 2023
US financ ial conditions may soon tighten further, as t he economy slows and credit spreads rise. But, by then, the 10-year Treasury yield may be falling. On Thursday, the 10-year Treasury yield briefly broke through 5% for the first time since 2007. That …
20th October 2023
Big banks in the US have reported quite strong earnings in Q3 but, given our pessimistic view of the economy there, we doubt that their stocks will outperform much in the next couple of months. Earnings season started last week in the US, and most major …
19th October 2023
We think China’s improving economy may help stop the fall in the country’s stock markets, and see them outperform those of the US for a bit. China’s stronger-than-expected Q3 GDP data, released earlier today, seem to have given the Hang Seng Index a small …
18th October 2023
We think equilibrium real policy rates in advanced economies will continue to rise over the next decade or so. That has profound implications for government bond yields and risky asset valuations. Discussions of ‘higher for longer’ generally relate to the …
17th October 2023
Market jitters around the war between Hamas and Israel appear to have stabilised today. But given that the uncertainty on that front is unlikely to fade entirely any time soon, it is worth taking stock of the warning signs evident in commodity markets. …
16th October 2023
We don’t expect a rise in earnings expectations to give the S&P 500 much of a near-term boost, but think the picture is more positive further ahead. Although US earnings season is getting under way, corporate profits probably haven’t always been front of …
13th October 2023
We still think the Fed and investors are too pessimistic about inflation in the US returning to target. We expect a continued fall in both core and headline inflation to push down US Treasury yields over at least the next year or so. CPI data out of the …
12th October 2023
The fall in Treasury yields since last Friday has pushed corporate bond yields down and equities up in the US. But while we think that Treasuries will keep rallying, we suspect that corporate bonds and equities will fare quite poorly in the near term. …
11th October 2023
We expect a continued paring back of US interest rate expectations to keep pushing long-dated Treasury yields down in coming quarters. But higher term premia may limit those falls in yields. Moves in long-dated Treasury yields have been mixed so far …
10th October 2023
The latest war between Hamas and Israel comes at a tricky juncture for global markets, and could easily increase volatility further. At this point, we think there are three key considerations around the potential market fallout. First, major financial …
9th October 2023
The US stock market has rallied so far today and is on track to bring to an end a spell of weekly losses. Although we think that the proximate cause of this recent weakness – rising bond yields – has largely run its course, we don’t expect the fortunes of …
6th October 2023
A laundry list of explanations has been provided for the surge in the term premia of Treasuries since mid-year, which has accounted for more than ~100bp rise in the 10-year yield based on the ACM model estimate. (See Chart 1.) One explanation that doesn’t …
5th October 2023
While government bond yields have stabilised today, their sharp rises over recent weeks are increasingly concerning. We think there are four key observations to make at this point. First, long-term yields have been rising steadily since mid-July, but have …
4th October 2023
We think that the yields of Australian long-term sovereign bonds will fall by a bit less than those of US Treasuries over the next couple of years, even though they’ve moved in lockstep lately. But the picture looks a bit different, to us, in other …
3rd October 2023
The higher-for-longer narrative took hold over the third quarter, pushing bonds and equities down in most markets. But we doubt that this narrative will last. We expect bond markets to rebound as inflation falls more quickly than widely anticipated. And …
2nd October 2023
While concerns about euro-zone public finances put upward pressure on bond yields there, the outlook for inflation will probably remain the focus for investors . In our view, that means bond yields in the euro-zone will fall by end-2024, but by much less …
29th September 2023
Both “safe” and “risky” assets have struggled during Q3 so far, as “risk-free” yields have risen. We expect the fortunes of safe assets to improve over the rest of this year, largely informed by our view that investors are underestimating how quickly …
28th September 2023
We think the “tech”-heavy sectors of the stock market, which have largely shrugged off the rout in Treasuries, will generally continue to do well. The Treasury market sell-off has continued in earnest this week. The 10-year Treasury and TIPS yields have …
10Y Treasuries have underperformed 2Y Treasuries over recent months, bucking the usual pattern after the final Fed hike (if, as we think, the final hike was in July). But we think the stage is now set for 10Y Treasuries to outperform over the next year or …
27th September 2023
We think that investors’ enthusiasm for artificial intelligence (AI) will grow again next year and inflate a bubble in stock markets. This is just one of the many consequences that AI will have on the economy, in our view, as we discuss at length in our …
26th September 2023
Another set of downbeat business surveys out of the euro-zone and an increasingly cautious tone from ECB officials have put the EUR/USD rate under renewed pressure. But more broadly market participants do not appear particularly downbeat on the prospects …
25th September 2023
With the Bank of Japan offering little new at its policy meeting earlier today and US Treasury yields surging higher in the wake of the FOMC’s hawkish message earlier in the week, pressure on the yen has ratcheted up further. Unless US policy changes …
22nd September 2023
Despite the hawkish rhetoric from central bankers on both sides of the Atlantic, we still expect most long-dated government bond yields in developed markets (DM) to fall over the next couple of years. After a surprisingly hawkish message from the FOMC …
21st September 2023
We remain of the view that investors are overestimating how high the federal funds rate will be over the next couple of years, and that Treasury yields will fall as a result. A lot of discussion around the upcoming FOMC decision has focused on the path …
20th September 2023
The recent rally in oil prices has had only a limited impact on bond and equity markets so far. And we doubt that this will change anytime soon, given our view that the rally will not last much longer and that other factors will continue to play a bigger …
19th September 2023
The latest increase in the 10-year TIPS yield, to a post-Global - Financial-Crisis high of ~2% at one point last week, has barely caused a ripple in the markets. More generally, the influence of “safe” US real government bond yields on other assets has …
18th September 2023
We expect China’s equities to fare better than those in the US in the near term. Stronger-than-expected August activity data out of China seem to have given the country’s equities a bit of a boost today. But the gains haven’t been particularly broad …
15th September 2023
We think that the ECB is more likely than the Fed to keep rates “higher for longer”, even as the euro-zone heads for a recession. That is one reason why we expect core euro-zone bond yields to fall by less than Treasury yields over the next year or so, …
14th September 2023
Although today’s August CPI report was broadly in line with expectations, it provided further evidence that underlying inflation in the US is coming down even as the economy there weathers the Fed’s prior increases in interest rates very well. If that …
13th September 2023
Our view on UK inflation vis-à-vis the US suggest s that bond yields are set to fall back by more in the former , adding downward pressure on sterling. Today’s mixed UK Labour market data prompted only modest falls in Gilt yields and sterling, as it …
12th September 2023
