The Presidential election was supposed to have been a big one. Yields were low, or high, based on how whichever expert or financial media article was interpreting the manner of trading in bond markets. You could take your pick; a “blue wave” was bad, as in BOND ROUT!!! due to inflation and potential for even more (how?) spendthrift ways in [...]
It’s easy to pick on Bill Gross because he made it so easy for everyone to do so. Time and again, he called for an end to the bond market “bull”, seeking to make huge profits on the fixed income massacre he said would soon follow whichever one of those decrees. There were several and they weren’t limited to just [...]
Europe’s problems are more immediate. Encouraging news about Pfizer’s vaccine won’t change the European circumstances in near enough time to avoid what’s more and more looking like a real possibility for a retrenchment. In this case, COVID cases are a primary culprit, meaning how authorities over there are responding to their rise. As such, it has taken the shine off [...]
What’s interesting about vaccine-phoria is that it’s largely been contained to just the one part of the bond market. Nominal Treasury yields at the long end have surged, while those at the shorter end have moved up a bit, too. Predictably, the calls for the BOND ROUT!!!! have grown, typically referencing the guaranteed end of the so-called 40-year bond “bull.” [...]
We've been documenting for weeks now how every chart, therefore every market, shows some kind of inflection around and immediately after August 27. This was Jay Powell’s big Jackson Hole fiasco, questions about the global “V” having already multiplied since June were further compounded by the absolute joke that was average inflation targeting. As noted earlier, even Germany’s bund market [...]
With all eyes on Washington DC, today, everyone should instead be focused on Europe. As we’ve written for nearly three years now, for nearly three years Europe has been at the unfortunate forefront of Euro$ #4. We could argue about whether coming out of GFC2 back in March pushed everything into a Reflation #4 – possible - or if this [...]
You pick up a newspaper (metaphorically, hardly anyone does this literally anymore) and you’d be left with the impression the year is 1979 again. Forget 2017; that was child’s play, more like 1968 in the mainstream imagination. October 2020 is going to mark the beginning of the biggest one in decades. Any day now.Inflation, of course. The Fed, the media [...]
The molehills get even smaller simply because there’s never any mountains. The conventional view, no surprise, is looking at this situation exactly backward and trying to impose an idea that just doesn’t fit. Upside down, if you prefer.A smooth Presidential election in the US plus the smooth transition into Jay Powell’s monetary ecstasy of inflation is going to bring on [...]
Why do we care so much about inflation targeting in any form? Ask that question of a central banker and they will merely state the answer is self-evident before calling the police to have you arrested and thrown in jail for daring to query. Inflation targeting is central to this version of the central bank, so much so it has [...]
Crude oil futures continue to be more than a buck in contango in the most liquid part of the WTI curve out to three months. One of the more important anti-reflation indications, especially given the situation on energy’s supply side, hardly anyone cares about this glaring contradiction given this latest very minor sell-off in the bond market’s long end.That means [...]
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