Pretiorates' Thoughts 46 - The bond market should be careful what it wishes for
Published on August 30th, 2024
In our analyses, we regularly examine current movements, identify possible influencing factors and assess the general market situation. However, these are not recommendations, but merely opinions and food for thought.
Hello dear readers!
Jay Powell has now said what the market has been hoping for most of the year. Interest rates will be cut... The yield curve has reacted again, especially at the long end...
A very good indicator of the Fed's policy is the yield on the US Treasury over 2 years. This recently fell to below 4 % and has thus already priced in a potential interest rate cut of over 1.5 %...
At 1.22 %, however, the futures market is indicating somewhat less...
One of the relatively strong market correlations is the relationship between copper and gold and the yield on 10-year government bonds. The logic behind the predictive power of the correlation is that the copper-gold ratio reflects the relationship between economic activity and inflation (copper) and between monetary and fiscal trends (gold), which is a pretty good indicator of 10-year government bond performance. The chart shows that the ratio has indicated the potential for interest rate cuts for some time now...
Also striking: the spread between the US Treasury over 2 and 10 years has almost completely disappeared. But not the spread between the US Treasury over 3 months and 10 years, which is more closely monitored by the FED. In addition, the market yield over 1 month remains above all other maturities - which in the past often did not bode well for the US economy (red dots)...
The gold/copper ratio also has a high correlation with the percentage performance of the stock market over the last 12 months. Currently, this indicates that the stock market (ceteris paribus) is fairly fairly valued...
The question remains as to why the Fed sees the need for lower interest rates. In fact, the risk of recession remains high at 71%...
Another very good indicator for the long-term development of the US economy is the Conference Board US Leading Index (LEI). This has indicated a negative trend for over two years, in stark contrast to the performance of the stock market...
Advances in the S&P500 Index are relatively harmless if the average dividend yield is higher than that of the US Treasury with a maturity of 10 years (red dots). With the upswing in equities for almost two years now, this condition is not met... (because there is a lot of hope in IT stocks without dividends)...
But what will happen to market interest rates if, according to the CPI cycle, inflation starts to rise again at the end of the year?
In fact, the bond market volatility cycle also indicates nervous times again in the coming months ...
Even if the market finally feels confirmed that lower interest rates are coming. Perhaps this development is not so positive...
That’s it for today!
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