The Bloomberg (Barclays) Treasury Index is down slightly (-0.19%) since the June rate hike. The Bloomberg (Barclays) High Yield index is up 1.53% since the June rate hike. Use the interactive chart below to view additional bond returns.
Bloomberg – Flattening Yield Curve Effect on Stocks Stocks Need Not Fear the Flattening Yield Curve Investors seem nervous about the yield curve flattening, but this historically coincides with strong equity-market returns. Yields began to rise at the end of 2016 and the spread between two-year and 10-year yields has fallen to 60 bps, a… Continue reading Yield Curve is Adhering to Its Playbook
ETF investors are pouring back into high yield funds after last week's turbulence.
OPEN Heating Oil, Weather And Contrarian Opinion Webcast In the webcast above, Jim Bianco discusses heating oil and our recent post on La Niña. Conditions in the Pacific Ocean are trending toward a La Niña winter. In North America, this tends to favor cooler, wetter conditions in the north and northwest, and warmer drier conditions in the… Continue reading Heating Oil, Weather And Contrarian Opinion Webcast
The Wall Street Journal – Fed Minutes to Give Hints on Officials’ Mood Ahead of Final Meeting of 2017 Fed officials have left their benchmark federal-funds rate unchanged in a range between 1% and 1.25% at their last three meetings. At their Sept. 19-20 policy meeting, they penciled in one more quarter-percentage-point rate rise in 2017, and… Continue reading What To Look For In The FOMC Minutes
The Wall Street Journal – Yellen Says She’s Uncertain Weak Inflation Is Transitory The Federal Reserve is monitoring inflation closely given officials’ uncertainty over whether the factors keeping it below their 2% target will prove endemic, Chairwoman Janet Yellen said Tuesday. “We expect [inflation] to move back up over the next year or two, but… Continue reading Yellen Talks Inflation, Or Lack Thereof
The Big Picture – Student Loans Not a Macro Problem The latest data shows that 16% of student loan borrowers have a balance bigger than $50k. With 44 million student loans outstanding this means that 7 million people or around 2% of the US population have a student loan balance bigger than $50k. The bottom line is… Continue reading Student Loans
Comment The following chart comes from Cullen Roche via Twitter. When an issue rises to #1, it is fully discounted in prices and a non-factor. It might be better to rename this chart from “The Top Tail Risk” to “What Is Priced In And No Longer Matters.”
Bloomberg – JPMorgan Weighs Offering CME Bitcoin Futures to Clients JPMorgan Chase & Co. is weighing whether to help clients bet on the price of bitcoin via the CME Group Inc.’s proposed futures contracts, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. The largest U.S. bank is gauging client demand and the potential risks… Continue reading If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em
Bloomberg View – Ben Emons: Dollar Hoarding Is a Year-End Risk for Markets In terms of credit, think back to late 2015 and early 2016, when the investment-grade and high-yield bond markets suffered elevated stress amid speculation that a collapse in oil prices would spark a wave of defaults in the highly-levered energy sector. What happened… Continue reading The Strengthening Dollar And Markets
The Wall Street Journal – Tech Rally Goes Global, Powering Major Stock Indexes to Fresh Records Just eight companies—Facebook Inc., Apple, Amazon.com Inc., Netflix Inc., Alphabet Inc., Baidu Inc., Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent—have increased by $1.4 trillion in market cap in 2017, a sum roughly equivalent to the combined annual GDP of Spain and Portugal. Tech… Continue reading Tech Stocks Are Also Taking Over The Global Markets