Analysis Topic: Interest Rates and the Bond Market
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Saturday, August 28, 2010
U.S. Fed About to Launch Monetary Shock and Awe / Interest-Rates / US Debt
The equities markets are in disarray while the bond markets continue to surge. The avalanche of bad news has started to take its toll on investor sentiment. Barry Ritholtz's "The Big Picture" reports that the bears have taken the high-ground and bullishness has dropped to its lowest level since March ‘09 when the market did a quick about-face and began a year-long rally. Could it happen again? No one knows, but the mood has definitely darkened along with the data. There's no talk of green shoots any more, and even the deficit hawks have gone into hibernation. It feels like the calm before the storm, which is why all eyes were on Jackson Hole this morning where Fed chairman Ben Bernanke delivered his verdict on the state of the economy on Friday.
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Saturday, August 28, 2010
U.S. Fiscal Debt and Monetization are taking the Financial System Down / Interest-Rates / US Debt
The Congressional Budget Office thinks the country faces serious budget problems, as well as serious economic problems, because it estimates that the deficit for 2011 will be $1.066 trillion. In addition it sees fiscal 2010, which ends on September 30th, at $1.34 trillion, or 9% of GDP. Last year was 9.9%.
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Friday, August 27, 2010
Gold and Stocks Yield Relationship and Buy Signals / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Time was, stocks were riskier than bonds and should have the higher yield. But then came inflation...
AT THE START of this week, stocks on the Dow Jones, Tokyo Nikkei and FTSE100 in London offered a bigger dividend-yield than you'd earn in interest from their local government bonds.
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Friday, August 27, 2010
U.S. Treasury Bond Rally Tiring, Gold Moving Higher / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
What might Bernanke's speech have said or implied that triggered the market response that we have witnessed so far today? How about: Don't fight the Fed...The economy is anemic, and the outlook might be uncertain-to-poor, but the Fed will pump, buy, and do whatever it takes to turn it around. The Fed will keep short rates at ZERO for a long time, and force companies and investors to take risk....
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Friday, August 27, 2010
Interest Rates Remain Low as Economic Concerns Persist / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
National average mortgage rates remain historically low and there appears to be no end in sight to the Fed’s low to no interest rate policy. A less than stellar Commerce Department report on the second quarter gross domestic product Friday (August 27) morning is the latest contributor to the sense of pessimism hanging over the US economy.
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Thursday, August 26, 2010
Play the Treasury Bond Market Yield Curve with New ETNs / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Many individual investors spend their time thinking about stocks. Which stocks are going up? How high are they going? Should I buy now?
These can be important questions, but stocks aren’t the only financial market. So why do eyes glaze over when the bond news comes on? My guess is that people don’t understand how big the bond market is — or how much influence it has on everything else.
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Thursday, August 26, 2010
Marc Faber and Peter Schiff on the U.S. Treasury Bond Bubble / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
As I've been saying for some time that the bond market is screaming for an imminent burst, now Dr. Marc Faber and Mr. Peter Schiff also spoke with CNBC on Aug. 23 warning of a bond bubble trouble.
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Wednesday, August 25, 2010
UK Government Bonds Gilts vs Gold, Vying for “Safe Haven” Money / Interest-Rates / UK Interest Rates
“I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man that controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply,” declared Baron Nathan Mayer de Rothschild, - once the richest man in Europe. In 1840, NM Rothschild was appointed as the bullion broker to the Bank of England, and went on to operate the Royal Mint Refinery in 1852. Nathan gained a position of such enormous power in the City of London that he was able to supply enough money to the Bank of England to enable it to avert a market liquidity crisis.
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Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Spike High for Treasuries / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Based on my near- and intermediate-term work, the patter and momentum configuration in the iShares Barclays 20+ Yr Treas Bond ETF (TLT) argue that the price structure hit a spike high this morning at 109.50, reflecting the flight to safety surge in buying of US Treasury paper despite the puny yields.
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Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Why Are You Buying a Stinkin' Bond Fund Now? / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Dr. Steve Sjuggerud writes: You're guilty... You're busted.
But it's not just you... Everybody is doing it. Everybody is buying bond funds.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Is the U.S. Treassury Bond Bubble About to Burst? / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Jason Simpkins writes: Bonds have provided a welcome safe-haven for investors seeking shelter from the financial maelstrom of the past two years. But now many analysts fear bonds have entered bubble territory and pose a rising threat to their holders.
The amount of money flowing into bonds is "probably not sustainable on a consistent basis" Joel Levington, managing director of corporate credit at Brookfield Investment Management Inc., told Bloomberg News. "Eventually it won't be sustainable. Whether that means five years from now or five weeks is a little difficult to tell."
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Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Self Fulfilling Prophecy: The U.S. Treasury Bond Trade / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
The 10 year T-Note is currently yielding 2.5%, and the Fed`s latest quantitative easing initiative is becoming counterproductive to their stated purpose of trying to stimulate the economy by encouraging more risk taking, i.e., private capital utilization seeking attractive return on investment opportunities. The issue is that Mr. Ben Bernanke and the Fed governors although great academicians have failed to take account for how traders and financial markets impact and take advantage of Fed policy.
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Wednesday, August 25, 2010
The True U.S. National Debt / Interest-Rates / US Debt
When I read Paul Krugman and the other Keynesian boneheads saying that our debt is not a problem, they quote figures about our debt of $13.3 trillion versus our GDP of $14.6 trillion not being so bad. That is only 91% of GDP. They point to World War II when our national debt reached 120% of GDP. They say everything worked out after that.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
At Least Be Aware Of The Current Risk In Treasury Bonds! / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Money continues to pour into bonds at a ferocious pace, with investors confident they are a safe and conservative holding in the midst of all the economic and stock market uncertainty.
With last week’s further rally, the 30-year Treasury bond had its biggest weekly gain in price since May, pushing their yield down to just 3.66%. The yield on 10-year Treasury notes was pushed down to 2.61%, while the yield on two-year notes fell to 0.496%.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
U.S. Treasury Bonds, The Fed's Biggest Bubble / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
I've made a living out of exposing economic fallacies, but there's one whale that I can't seem to harpoon. Even top-flight Wall Street analysts seem to believe that the Fed's doubling of the monetary base after the credit crunch has not had an inflationary impact on our economy. Their logic can be summed up like so: "The money the Fed created and dropped from helicopters has all been caught in the trees." In other words, the Fed is creating money, but it is just being held as excess reserves by the banking system instead of being loaned to the public. Therefore, the money supply hasn't truly increased, there is no money multiplier effect, and aggregate price levels are behaving themselves.
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Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Why US Treasury Notes Will Eventually Yield Nothing / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
For all investors seeking income, I have some bad news for you. US Treasury notes and bonds will eventually yield nothing. That’s right, I said it. “Zero percent interest coupons”. Many pundits would argue the opposite. And yes, the argument for higher interest coupons in the future is valid and sound. The US is currently following a strategy of debt destruction such that as I write, the nation is closing in on $13.5 trillion in debt. To see the number is quite startling. It is: $13,500,000,000,000.00. Mercy! The number is so large, most calculators can’t account for all the numeric placeholders. The number is so large, we now round up by hundred billions. The number is so large, the late astronomer, Carl Sagan, referred to really large numbers as “billions and billions”.
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Tuesday, August 24, 2010
A U.S. Treasury Bond Bubble? Not Likely! / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
My thoughts on the bond bubble can be summarized in two words: "not likely". When commentators have to tell you it is a bubble, it isn't a bubble. Or to put this in another context, name me one market top in the last 10 years where the commentators on CNBC where not imploring their audience to buy at the top. If anything, the commentators have this aura of incredulousness. "How dare bonds head higher and stocks head lower. Doesn't everyone know how undervalued equities are?" When CNBC throws in the towel and when they utter those famous words - "is it to late to buy now?" - then we can consider the possibility of a bond bubble.
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Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Bill Gross Pushing for MORE Bailouts for PIMCO Bond Fund / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Two years ago when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were collapsing, former Goldman Sachs CEO and U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson repeated the promise of “no more bailouts,” so as to calm worried Americans who feared they would be on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars of toxic mortgages held by these GSEs.
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Monday, August 23, 2010
What Does Debt-Based Money Imply for Interest Payments? / Interest-Rates / US Debt
In a previous article, I explained the sense in which our fractional-reserve, fiat financial system is built upon debt-based money. In this perverse arrangement, new dollars come into existence through the creation of government and private debt. Going the other way, if the private sector and the federal government ever began seriously paying down their debts, the supply of US dollars would shrink.
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Sunday, August 22, 2010
U.S. Treasury Bond Market Continues to Power Ahead / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
The long bond futures moved up another couple of points as the fundamental backdrop looks to be increasingly dire. In spite of the bullish bias of equity options expiry week, stocks struggled mightily last week as the stocks to bonds investment flows gained momentum. We are back to the risk versus safe haven trade as the US Dollar and bonds benefitted from their perceived safe haven status.
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