Analysis Topic: Interest Rates and the Bond Market
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Monday, February 01, 2016
US Dollar and US Treasury Bonds Big Picture / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Since we covered the many different markets in detail last week I would like to focus back in on the US dollar and the TLT looking for clues for the big picture direction. The huge daily swings, in say the INDU last week, makes it very hard to keep and hold a short or long position unless you're perfect on your entry point. In a bull market it's two steps forward and one step backward and in a bear market it's two steps down and one step up. If an entry point in a bear market is not made in the first part of the two steps down sequence you'll find your self behind at some point in the trade if the entry point was made in step two. This is one reason why it's so important to know the direction of the big trend. Until something changes I believe the US stock markets are now in a bear market. There are a lot of things that can change that outlook but for today that's what the charts are suggesting.
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Monday, February 01, 2016
BOJ Negative Interest Rates Central Banking Crime Syndicate's War on Cash for Triggering Panic Consumption / Interest-Rates / War on Cash
Whilst most market commentators were fixated on the prospects for further Fed tightening, the so called unwinding of easy money quantitative easing in the United States. The Japanese arm of the central banking crime syndicate took the markets by storm Friday by effectively decreeing that inflation is just too low for the systematic stealth theft of bank deposits to continue so now it's time to ramp things up a notch with the next step which is for NEGATIVE INTEREST RATES. The FIRST instance of which will be that an interest rate of -0.1% will be applied to bank deposits (excess reserves) with the central bank, again this is just the FIRST instance with MORE or rather WORSE to follow which sends a discouraging message to all against holding Yen deposits, triggering an immediate drop of over 2% in the value of the Yen.
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Saturday, January 30, 2016
Lacy Hunt: Inflation and 10-Year US Treasury Yields Headed Lower / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
Dr. Lacy Hunt joins FRA Co-Founder Gordon T. Long in an in-depth discussion on the current debt dilemma and the decisions of the Federal Reserve. Dr. Lacy H. Hunt, an internationally known economist, is Executive Vice President of Hoisington Investment Management Company, a firm that manages over $5 billion for pension funds, endowments, insurance companies and others. He is the author of two books, and numerous articles in leading magazines, periodicals and scholarly journals. Included among the publishers of his articles are. Barron's, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, the Journal of Finance, the Financial Analysts Journal and the Journal of Portfolio Management.
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Friday, January 29, 2016
Seven Years of Monetary Quackery; Can the Fed Admit it Got it Wrong? / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
America’s richest investors are betting trillions of dollars that the US economy will stay lousy for years to come.
Who are these wealthy investors?
Bondholders. And their views on the state of the economy are reflected in the yields on long-term US Treasuries. At present, the yields on long-term debt are very low which means that investors think the economy will continue to underperform while inflation remains in check.
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Friday, January 29, 2016
Japan Just Lit the Fuse on a $9 Trillion Debt Implosion / Interest-Rates / Global Debt Crisis 2016
Last night the Bank of Japan implemented Negative Interest Rate Policy, or NIRP.
It is the second Central Bank to do so. The European Central Bank or ECB first went to NIRP in June 2014.
Thus, between Japan and Europe, over 20% of the world’s GDP is being managed by a Central Bank with NIRP.
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Friday, January 29, 2016
Janet Yellen "Peddling Fiction" on a Worsening Economy... Doesn’t Raise Rates and Downgrades Outlook / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
We have made some very bold claims in the past. Since 2010, to many jears, we said that the Federal Reserve would never raise rates significantly again. Most laughed. They said that surely this crazy, emergency 0% interest rate policy was only temporary. Five long years passed, and even a Fed Chairman later, before finally, after seven years-to-the-day, on December 16th, Janet Yellen took the bold move to raise rates 0.25%.
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Thursday, January 28, 2016
The Fed Passes the Buck: Blame Oil and China / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
C. Jay Engel writes: There are a handful of themes out there on recent market action that are either totally wrong or otherwise highly misleading. For instance, regarding the recent calamity in the capital markets, one especially apparent dichotomy has presented itself as offering two choices as to what, exactly, is causing the painful turbulence.
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Tuesday, January 19, 2016
The Citadel Is Breached: Congress Taps the Fed for Infrastructure Funding / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
In a landmark infrastructure bill passed in December, Congress finally penetrated the Fed's "independence" by tapping its reserves and bank dividends for infrastructure funding.
The bill was a start. But some experts, including Congressional candidate Tim Canova, say Congress should go further and authorize funds to be issued for infrastructure directly.
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Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Margin Rules Changes Force New Private Funding Of Public Debt / Interest-Rates / US Debt
The Federal Reserve and other regulators around the world (including all members of the G-20) have recently agreed to alter margin rules, which will allow them to claim new powers over lending and leverage. In the United States these developing regulatory changes will not be restricted to the Fed's legal oversight over banks alone, but will affect all financial companies.
The new margin rules will impact about $4.4 trillion in investments in the US. In combination with new rules for $2.7 trillion in money funds, the regulations are changing for about $7 trillion in investments. And the combined effect of these changes may be to drive up to $2.5 trillion out of the private investment markets and into purchasing the debts of a heavily indebted US government, thereby providing a very low cost source of funds.
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Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Junk Bonds Slump - Will 2016 be The Year The Fed Fails? / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
To many economists, the biggest mistake the Fed has made has been a lack of aggression in raising interest rates. After all, they reason, the U.S. job market is as strong as it has been since 2007 and the economy, even if sluggish, is at least back on an even keel. These same observers cheered the Fed's decision to raise the Fed funds rate in December by a quarter percentage point.
Yet there is even more reason to worry that the raising of the Fed funds rate last month may have been a policy blunder of major proportions. In this commentary we'll briefly examine the distinct possibility that the Fed has put the U.S. financial market on the cusp of another troublesome year ahead.
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Monday, January 18, 2016
Central Banks: the Biggest Short of All / Interest-Rates / Central Banks
Transcript Excerpt: Monday January 18th 2006 still like to talk about the big short book written by
mouth Michael movers who is really a lot of other books about finance he wrote
liars poker that was the region no
also lashed boys Wall Street that came out in 2014 the bigger shirt came was
written in and came out in 2010 and I watched the new movie that's come out
the big short that came out on December 15th in the USA is interesting because
it was the day before
hydrates and Wikipedia call in the American biographical comedy drama and
it's interesting to see that it cost twenty million to me the movie and it's
already grossed seventy million dollars in box office which is not bad for a
Sunday, January 17, 2016
The Bursting of the Bond Bubble Has Begun - Pt 2 / Interest-Rates / International Bond Market
As we wrote earlier this week, bursting of the bond bubble has begun.
The decision by Central Banks to “inflate” the system’s debts away post-2008 has resulted in the misallocation of trillions of Dollars of capital.
The worst offenders were Chinese corporates. China has created the single largest mountain of bad debt in the world. Indeed, things are so out of control in China that 45% of all proceeds from new bond issuance are being used just to pay off interest on old loans.
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Friday, January 15, 2016
The Bond Bubble Has Begun Bursting / Interest-Rates / Corporate Bonds
The bursting of the bond bubble has begun.
As I’ve outlined previously the primary concern for Central Banks is the bond bubble. CNBC and other financial media focus on stocks because the asset class is more volatile and so makes for better content, but the foundation of the financial system is bonds. And bonds are THE focus for Central Banks.
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Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Summers: Global Economy Can't Withstand Four 2016 Fed Hikes / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers spoke with Stephanie Ruhle and David Westin on Bloomberg TV's "Bloomberg <GO>." On the expectation of four rate hikes in 2016, Summers said: "I'd be surprised if the world economy can comfortably withstand four hikes. And I think that basically markets agree with me. And that's why despite the statements that are being made, markets aren't expecting four hikes."
Summers also said: "If you ask if there are risk that we're going to find ourselves in a situation within the next two years where policy is going to have to reverse, yes. I think that is a significant risk."
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Monday, January 11, 2016
Junk Rhymes with Subprime / Interest-Rates / Corporate Bonds
On December 16th 2008, in what Ben Bernanke averred took a tremendous amount of "moral courage", the Federal Reserve officially arrived at its Zero Interest Rate Policy. ZIRP was a huge win for borrowers because it drove down the carrying cost of debt to historic lows. Unfortunately, savers didn't fare as well.
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Monday, January 11, 2016
Rigged U.S. Ttreasury Bond Market Double Barreled Hidden Q.E. To Infinity / Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing
We were just treated to a fake official rate hike, and it was cleverly executed. The recent supposed USFed rate hike was a gigantic fraud, a misdirection, a clever ploy, and an act of extreme desperation. We were told of an official 25 basis point interest rate hike. But a hike of 0.25% is nowhere to be seen. The reality is that the USFed is so strapped, so deeply under siege, so overwhelmed, that it requires urgent help from the USDept Treasury. So they have expanded QE to become Double Barreled Hidden QE to Infinity. It has an important feature now, with national security stamped on it. This is truly the end game for the USDollar. Big thanks to Rob Kirby and EuroRaj on my colleague team for leading the way and shining the spotlight. Their abilities to see through the maze, smoke, mirrors, and din is impressive.
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Saturday, January 02, 2016
The Fed’s Academic-Based Theories Are Creating a BRUTAL Economic Reality / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
One of the most frustrating aspects of today’s financial system is the fact that the Fed is being lead by lifelong academics with no real world banking or business experience.
Consider the cases of Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen.
Neither of these individuals has ever created a job based on generating sales of any kind. Neither of them has ever had to make payroll. Neither of them has ever run a business. What are economic realities for business owners (e.g. operating costs, capital and profits) are just abstract concepts for Bernanke and Yellen.
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Saturday, January 02, 2016
A 'Witch's Brew' Bubbling in Bond Market ETFs / Interest-Rates / Corporate Bonds
We believe the Credit Cycle has turned and with it will come some massive unexpected shocks. One of these will be the fall out in the Bond Market, centered around the dramatic growth explosion in Bond ETFs coupled with the post financial crisis regulatory changes that effectively removed banks from making markets in corporate bonds. It is a 'Witch's Brew' with a flattening yield curve bringing it to a boil.
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Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Does The National Debt Supercycle Override The Normal U.S. Interest Rate Cycle? / Interest-Rates / US Debt
Markets and economies usually run in cycles and there have been numerous previous reversals where falling interest rates have been replaced by rising interest rates. The soothing reassurances from many financial authorities and much of the financial media are that there is no need for the general public to worry - because this sort of thing is quite normal.
But is this actually true? Have we really been "here" before?
Or are there are major differences between this time around and the previous cycles of rising interest rates which mean that much of recent history may not apply at all?
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Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Get Your Money Out of Italian Banks Now! Austerity and Bail-Ins Fan Populist Flames / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2015
Austerity and Bail-Ins Fan Populist Flames
The Italian economy is growing, albeit barely. But Italy is still saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Citizens are upset about a recovery that has passed most of them by. For example, youth unemployment is a whopping 39.8%.
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