Analysis Topic: Interest Rates and the Bond Market
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Monday, July 20, 2009
US Treasury Bonds Still Heading Lower / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
In our last update for the US Treasury Bonds (click here to view), we could observe a downward reversal in Treasury bonds. This downtrend has gained momentum during the last days, especially in the 30 year US Treasuries. The following chart was send to subscribers on July 15th:
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Thursday, July 16, 2009
Background Info on Leading Bond Market ETFs / Interest-Rates / Exchange Traded Funds
We find that investors tend to have a clearer understanding of the portfolios behind equity funds than behind bond funds. This blog post is provided to shine some light in a comparative way on the portfolios and recent performance of several leading bond ETFs.
To be clear, we are not recommending any particular asset allocation or fund in this post — just providing background information that may be helpful in a general way.
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Thursday, July 16, 2009
California's Debt Crisis as Bond Holders Lose Confidence in the States Ability to Repay / Interest-Rates / US Debt
Bad for the Goose, Worse for the Gander - Last week, major banks announced they would no longer offer cash for the IOU's written by the state of California. At the same time, China proposed that the U.S. dollar be replaced as the world's official reserve currency. Although seemingly unrelated, these two developments have at their root the same issue: uneasy creditors.
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Sunday, July 12, 2009
Fed Gets It Wrong, Credit Crisis Losses Rising Everywhere / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2009
Mike Larson writes: Remember when policymakers at the Federal Reserve told us in 2007 and 2008 that the credit problems were “contained” to the subprime mortgage sector? Or when then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson spouted the same line?
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Friday, July 10, 2009
US Treasury Bonds Retracement, But Still Bullish / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Desperate bond bears got their retracement in the 30 year treasury bond yesterday, as it gave back some of the huge gains of the last days. However, this does not change the bullish picture that can be observed when looking at the short and intermediate term charts.
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Friday, July 10, 2009
Rising Interest Rates, the Governments Worst Nightmare / Interest-Rates / US Debt
Brian Hunt writes: The government's worst nightmare is off the table for now.
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Friday, July 10, 2009
How to Earn 18% Interest From the Government / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Dr. Steve Sjuggerud writes:
Here in Florida, counties are desperate for money...
Where I live on the Florida Coast, the main source of county government revenue is property taxes. The problem is, more people than ever are not paying their property taxes.
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Fixed Mortage Interest Rates Still Rising / Interest-Rates / Mortgages
The cost of fixed rate mortgages continues to rise, even though swap rates have continued to fall during the past month.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Irrelevant UK Base Interest Rate on Hold as Real Rates have Already Begun to Rise / Interest-Rates / UK Interest Rates
The Bank of England is expected to keep UK interest rates on hold at 0.5% today for a fourth month. However the deep interest rate cuts have failed to lift the economy out of recession, hence the reason why the Bank of England has detonated the monetary policy equivalent of a nuclear bomb in the form of Quantitative Easing, printing £125 billion of electronic money primarily to monetize government debt to help finance the huge annual budget deficit that is mushrooming towards £180 billion for 2009 alone by artificially keeping longer term interest rates lower.
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Wednesday, July 08, 2009
The True Cost of 0.25% Interest Rate / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
"Hey! If banks won't lend at low-to-zero rates of interest, maybe we should try sub-zero rates instead..."
IT'S NO BIG DEAL at present – only about $200 in fact.
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Tuesday, July 07, 2009
California Bankrupt, If You Live in California, Here's What You Do... / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Dr. Steve Sjuggerud writes: Would you lend money to someone who is completely broke and in a mountain of debt... and only demand 3.75% interest?
That's what California is forcing many people to do today.
Monday, July 06, 2009
Monster U.S. Treasury Bond Supply, a Game Changing Event? / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
For the US Treasury bond market it’s time for some reflection. What we have in front of us could be “game-changing.” This, from a June 7 Bloomberg essay entitled, Treasury’s Summer Rally Not This Year Due to Supply:
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Sunday, July 05, 2009
Treasury Bonds, Not the Time to Become a Bear (yet) / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Despite all hyper-inflation scenarios that can be read about in almost every financial newspaper and market commentary nowadays, the 30 year Treasury Bond (ZB September 09) has been in a steady uptrend for quite a while now, advancing from a low of 111'215 on 6/11/09 to a high of 119'095 this past week.
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Friday, July 03, 2009
Negative Global Interest Rates, Sweden Cuts Deposit Rate to NEGATIVE .25% / Interest-Rates / Deflation
There has been a lot of ludicrous recommendations recently to combat deflation by making deposit rates negative. I did not think any central bank would be dumb enough to try it. I thought wrong.
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Thursday, July 02, 2009
In the Future, Interest Rates Will Soar and Consumers Will be Sore Also / Interest-Rates / International Bond Market
At the present, governments around the globe are printing money as if there were no tomorrow in order to try and prevent debt-laden banks from going under and trying to stimulate the fractional reserve banking system. The past 20 years of economic growth has been based on a “Pay it Forward” basis…someone gets a new couch or car and ends up paying for it over a defined period of time. The expansion of credit in turn allowed for false consumption because most people never really had the money in hand.
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Thursday, July 02, 2009
U.S. Treasury Bond Market Update / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
The 30year T-Bond (ZB September 09) is in an uptrend since it traded above the green resistance line for 2 consecutive bars. However, ZB could be in the process of turning down again after having made an a-b-c correction off its recent lows. A confirmation for this assumption would be visible if and when ZB U9 trades below the red line of the 180 minute chart - preferably for two consecutive bars. The red sell-line is currently at 116'21.
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Wednesday, July 01, 2009
New Recovery High for Treasury Bond TBT ETF / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Let’s notice that the ProShares UltraShort 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (NYSE: TBT) has recovered all of yesterday’s weakness and in fact has climbed to a marginal new recovery high this morning on the way to my next optimal target zone of 52.50/80.
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Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Investment Grade Bonds Return 9.2%, Junk Returns 29%; Has the "Hard Money" Been Made? / Interest-Rates / Corporate Bonds
As long as the corporate bond market is healthy there is going to be a bid on equities. And in the first half of 2009, junk bonds have been running.
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Monday, June 29, 2009
Objective Analysis of the Increase in the Fed's Balance Sheet / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2009
In recent weeks two prominent economic commentators - Arthur Laffer and Alan Greenspan - have warned about the inflationary potential emanating from the unprecedented increase in the Fed's balance sheet. Yes, as shown in Chart 1, reserves created by the Fed have increased by a staggering $858 billion in the 12 months ended May. But excess reserves on the books of depository institutions have increased by almost as much, $842 billion (see Chart 2). So, in the 12 months ended May, 98% of the increase in reserves created by the Fed has simply ended up as idle reserves on the books of depository institutions.
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Monday, June 29, 2009
U.S. Treasury Bonds Strong Performance Despite Record Issuance / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
The bond market put in a strong performance in spite of another record volume of Treasury Note auctions last week. As discussed in this here column last week, Treasury supply has been an ongoing theme in the market for a while. It has been front page news for months now and it is pretty much fully discounted for that reason.
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