Analysis Topic: Interest Rates and the Bond Market
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Monday, February 12, 2018
Reckless Deficit Spending by Congress Set to Wreck the Dollar / Interest-Rates / US Debt
U.S. equities got a free ride on the Trump train after his election, even as Federal Reserve officials hiked interest rates. That ride may have ended last week.
If commentators are correct and the blame for recent selling in the stock market falls on the burgeoning fear of rising interest rates, it looks like Fed tightening is finally having the effect many predicted when the cycle began.
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Sunday, February 11, 2018
The Fed’s Impossible Choice, In Three Charts / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
Critics of “New Age” monetary policy have been predicting that central banks would eventually run out of ways to trick people into borrowing money. There are at least three reasons to wonder if that time has finally come:
Wage inflation is accelerating
Normally, towards the end of a cycle companies have trouble finding enough workers to keep up with their rising sales. So they start paying new hires more generously. This ignites “wage inflation,” which is one of the signals central banks use to decide when to start raising interest rates. The following chart shows a big jump in wages in the second half of 2017. And that’s before all those $1,000 bonuses that companies have lately been handing out in response to lower corporate taxes. So it’s a safe bet that wage inflation will accelerate during the first half of 2018.
Wednesday, February 07, 2018
Is The 37 Year Bullish US Treasury Bond Market Ending? / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
The bond market has enjoyed a strong bull market for nearly four decades with yields continuing to go lower. The bull market has been going on for so long that no current active fund manager can imagine what it looks like when interest rates were to be like the 1980s at 20%. If people in the 1980s started trading in their early thirties, they would have been almost 70 years old by now, so chances are they are not active in the market anymore.
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Monday, February 05, 2018
Global Synchronized US Bond Collapse / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
We have all heard, in ad nauseam fashion, Wall Street’s current favorite mantra touting a global synchronized economic recovery. For the record, global GDP growth for 2017 was 3.7%, according to the International Monetary Fund. And, although this is an improvement from recent years, you must take into account that in 2004 it was 4.4%, in 2005 it was 3.8%, in 2006 it was 4.3%, and in 2007 it was 4.2%. The Point being, it’s not as if the current rate of global growth has climbed to a level never before witnessed in history—it’s not even close.
However, the more salient phenomenon now underway—far more important than the rather pedestrian move higher in global GDP--is the globally synchronized bond collapse, which the Main Stream Financial Media is dismissing with alacrity. Yields are on the move higher around the world and the rate of change is now escalating.
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Sunday, February 04, 2018
10yr Yield Nears Target, ‘Inflation Trade’ Failing, Gold Sector Shaking Off Inflation Bugs / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Over and over again I’ve been making goofy headlines about the Amigos, the 3 macro riders who will reach (or abort) their respective destinations, at which point the macro is subject to change. The latest update was yesterday with a daily chart view.
Just look at them, the SPX vs. Gold Amigo, the 10yr & 30yr Yield Amigo and the Yield Curve Amigo. So happy-go-lucky while they ride. But #2, the one in the middle, looks like he’s bracing for something.
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Thursday, February 01, 2018
Will the Threat of a Bear Market in Bonds Finally Get Stocks Attention? / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
The single most important bond in the world is the US 10-Year Treasury bond.
According to modern financial theory, this bond, with a duration that is meant to cover a full economic cycle, is generally considered the “risk free” rate of the return for the entire financial system.
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Thursday, February 01, 2018
US Treasury Yields Inflating? / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
FundamentalsThe Herd is running into one direction. It is from bonds into stocks. The latest BAML Fund Manager report showed an intresting picture. Extreme flows have been recorded over the past couple of months relative to the past 12 years. That came on top of the fact that flows were at elevated levels throughout the past 14 months already.
The investment reasoning behind that gets confirmed by economic fundamentals. The US economy is expanding, retail sales have risen to all-time highs, unemployment is at a multidecade low, and new home sales look as good as they have never looked for the past 10 years.
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Wednesday, January 31, 2018
The Most Important Bond In the World Just Broke a 25 Year Downtrend / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
The single most important bond in the world is the US 10-Year Treasury bond.
According to modern financial theory, this bond, with a duration that is meant to cover a full economic cycle, is generally considered the “risk free” rate of the return for the entire financial system.
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Tuesday, January 30, 2018
US Treasury Bonds: Fuse to Light the Bonfire / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Many are the metaphors used to describe the agent that initiates a major crisis. Light the fuse, or pull the trigger, pull the rug out from under the room, or pull on the string for unraveling the sweater, these are commonly heard. What comes soon is the Bonfire of the Vanities, a term the Jackass prefers since irony is thick. Hardly the burning of objects deemed as tempting toward occasions of sin as in the 15th Century. In the present-day case, the burning would be of the massive piles of paper assets the US Federal Reserve has been illicitly supporting for the past several years. The bonfire would be of falsely valued heaps of paper. If truth be known, the Quantitative Easing was put in place in 2012 when the big US banks were all in danger of failures. They required amplified liquidity infusions in order to prevent these giant silos of insolvency from entering financial failure. Their huge bond holdings were supported. Generally, when insolvency meets illiquidity, big failures occur. The USGovt and USFed colluded to prevent the entire set of Wall Street banks from failing like Lehman Brothers did. They all had the same ugly insolvent traits. Few tell the story correctly, but Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan suffocated Lehman to death. Lehman did not fail without help. Like Chief Justice Scalia, Lehman was suffocated in a bed of unpaid bond sales. What comes next is a nasty corrosive dangerous sequence of financial market crises, where pumped paper assets suffer notable declines. It will include the stock, bond, and currency markets. The last times all three suffered simultaneous declines was 1979 and 1987. Add soon 2018.
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Tuesday, January 30, 2018
Illinois’ Debt Crisis Foreshadows America’s Financial Future / Interest-Rates / US Debt
Those wanting a glimpse into the future of our federal government’s finances should have a gander at Illinois. The state recently “resolved” a high-profile battle over its budget. Taxpayers were clubbed with a 32% hike in income taxes in an effort to shore up massive underfunding in public employee pensions, among other deficiencies.
But, predictably, it isn’t working. People are leaving the state in droves.
In fact, Illinois now leads the nation in population collapse. Statistics show people leaving the state at the rate of 1 every 4.3 minutes and the state dropped from 5th place to 6th in terms of overall population.
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Tuesday, January 23, 2018
Government Shutdown Ends – Markets Ignore Looming Debt and Bond Market Threat / Interest-Rates / US Debt
– U.S. Senate pass a temporary spending plan through Feb. 8 to end shutdown
– Markets shrug off both government shutdown and re-opening
– Markets, government and media ignoring worsening US debt position
– Gold responding positively to U.S. dysfunction, rising US Treasury yields & weaker dollar
– U.S. government national debt is $20.6 trillion and increasing rapidly
– ‘Bonds, like men, are in a bear market’ – Bill Gross
Sunday, January 14, 2018
Did China Just Burst the Everything Bubble? / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
The biggest news today comes from China, which has announced it will “slow or halt” US Treasury purchases.
This is the so-called NUCLEAR option: the threat by China to stop buying US debt. And it’s an absolute game-changer.
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Sunday, January 14, 2018
Bubble Watch: Both the Currency Markets and Bonds Markets See Inflation Coming / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
If you want to make money investing, you first need to understand the structure of the asset classes in our current financial system,
Everyone likes to go bonkers over stocks, but the reality is that the stock market is in fact one of the smallest and least liquid markets on the planet. All told, US stocks are roughly $26 trillion in market cap.
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Wednesday, January 10, 2018
TMV : 3X Leveraged Short on US Treasury Bonds / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
TMV is a 3 X short the TLT 20 year treasure bond etf. This trade is based on the TLT. For well over three years now the TLT has been building out what looks like a massive H&S top with the top of the right shoulder now in play. I’m going to take an initial position and buy 250 shares of TMV, 3 X short the TLT, and buy 250 shares at the market at 18.83 with the sell/stop on a daily close below the right shoulder low on the daily chart for the TMV at 17.35. I’m anticipating the the right shoulder high on the TLT will be the ultimate high. There will be several more entry points if this trades starts to workout.
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Tuesday, January 09, 2018
US Interest Rates Walking on Narrow Ledge / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
There is a huge shock in store for those who have been lulled to sleep by a stock market that has become accustomed to no volatility and only an upward direction. And that alarm bell can be found in the price action of Bitcoin, which recently tumbled over 40% is less than a week. For the implosion within the cryptocurrency world foreshadows what will happen with the major averages as the Federal Reserve futilely attempts to stop monetizing the exploding mountain of U.S. debt.
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Monday, January 08, 2018
UK Base Interest Rate Rise Aftermath Sees Mortgage Competition Slow / Interest-Rates / UK Interest Rates
Moneyfacts UK Mortgage Trends Treasury Report data (not yet published) reveals a sharp slowdown in mortgage competition, just two short months after the Bank of England increased the base rate.
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Friday, January 05, 2018
European Bonds Are 2018’s Number One Risk / Interest-Rates / International Bond Market
BY JARED DILLIAN : No shortage of stupid things these days:
- Bitcoin
- Litecoin
- Pizzacoin
- Canadian real estate
- Swedish real estate
- Australian real estate
- FANG
- Venture capital
Thursday, December 21, 2017
If You Want To Get Rich, Invest In T-Bills, Not FANGs Or Bitcoin / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
BY JARED DILLIAN : Demand curves are usually downward-sloping. That’s because people will buy more of a product when it is cheaper and less of it when it is more expensive.
Some things—like stocks and especially bitcoin—have upward-sloping demand curves, which should be theoretically impossible. But they happen in the real world. People really want bitcoin when it is expensive, but nobody was interested when it was cheap.
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Friday, December 15, 2017
Trends in the U.S. Unemployment rate and the U.S. Yield curve / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
The trends in both the U.S. Unemployment rate and the U.S. Yield curve are linked to similar economic pressures.
The Unemployment rate rises and falls due to a number of key reasons and reflects the changes in the economy.
The U.S. Yield curve acts as a tool for the Fed to conduct its monetary policy in its goal for the long-term health (ie stable prices and sustainable employment) of the economy.
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Tuesday, December 12, 2017
Which Central Bank Will Go Under First When the Everything Bubble Bursts? / Interest-Rates / Central Banks
In the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis, Central Banks began cornering the sovereign bond market via Zero or even Negative interest rates and Quantitative Easing (QE) programs.
The goal here was to reflate the financial system by pushing the “risk free rate” to extraordinary lows. By doing this, Central Bankers were hoping to:
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