Comment At the start of the year the Fed projected four rate hikes in 2016. Then the markets fell and the Fed backed off. Now, in the wake of recent Fed statements, the market is pricing in one rate hike... Read More
Comment Is the crowd bullish or bearish on bonds? It depends on which crowd one is looking at. Shorter-term traders are very bullish, middle-term managers are neutral and longer-term economists and professional forecasters remain very bearish. Short-Term Traders On the... Read More
Time Magazine – Chancellor Of The Free World The year 2015 marked the start of Merkel?s 10th year as Chancellor of a united Germany and the de facto leader of the European Union, the most prosperous joint venture on the... Read More
<Click on chart for larger image> Comment We first showed the chart above yesterday. It shows the worst one-year total return declines in bond history. The thick brown line shows the decline since January 30 (top axis). The thick blue... Read More
As the next chart shows, flows into long Treasury ETFs have slowed a bit in the past couple months, but speculators are still much longer than they were prior to the flash yield crash. <Click on chart for larger... Read More
Project Syndicate – Robert Shiller: How Scary Is the Bond Market? The prices of long-term government bonds have been running very high in recent years (that is, their yields have been very low). In the United States, the 30-year Treasury... Read More
<Click on table for larger image> Comment The table above shows the results of the Bloomberg?s survey of economists. In the latest survey 90% of economists are looking for higher yields in the next six months. The Wall Street Journal... Read More
<Click on table for larger image> Comment The table above shows the results of the Bloomberg’s survey of economists. In the latest survey 91% of economists are looking for higher yields in the next six months. This marks the lowest... Read More
As the next chart shows, money has been pouring into long-term Treasury ETFs (green line) relative to inverse (or short) long-term Treasury ETFs (red line) since the flash yield crash. This represents the most dramatic reversal among the players... Read More
The New York Times – For Bond Investors, That Other Shoe Still Didn?t Drop BONDS confounded conventional wisdom in 2014 with a much-better-than-expected return.?If you asked anyone at the beginning of 2014 where the rate on the 10-year Treasury would... Read More
CNBC – Guess Who’s Buying All the Bonds? (It’s Not the Fed) Mom-and-pop investors, and not the Federal Reserve, have been the ones most responsible for driving the mad dash to government debt, according to newly released data. The Fed’s... Read More