Displaying items by tag: bonds

(New York)

Anybody who is worried about a pending bond bear market might take some solace in recent news. Bond markets are becoming increasingly skeptical of the Fed’s bullish stance on the economy, and traders believe there won’t be nearly as many rate hikes as the Fed says. The US has just seen a weak inflation report, and a flattening of the yield curve, both at home and in the Eurodollar market, spells ill for the economy. So while the Fed says it will continue to hike rates into 2020, top market analysts are saying things like “The markets are telling us that there is a pretty high risk of economic slowdown or recession at the end of 2019” (Janney Capital Management).

FINSUM: We think the economy will definitely start to weaken before 2020. Perhaps we will not have a deep recession, but we definitely don’t think there will be continuous hikes for the next year and a half, which is good news for bonds.

(New York)

One of the market’s favorite prognosticators has just called for a big financial crisis. Mark Mobius, 81, veteran investor, thinks that EMs are going to plunge, and that the normalization of interest rates and monetary policy will cause a crisis. “There’s no question we’ll see a financial crisis sooner or later because we must remember we’re coming off from a period of cheap money … There’s going to be a real squeeze for many of these companies that depended upon cheap money to keep on going”, says Mobius.

FINSUM: Emerging markets are currently having a rough time and the rise in rates is going to be turbulent, but calling for a Crisis seems a bit premature.

(New York)

Are you worried about an inverted yield curve and the arrival of a recession? Morgan Stanley thinks you should be, as the bank has just called for a big bust coming to markets and the economy. MS thinks the Fed will end its contraction of its balance sheet soon, which will be supportive for long-dated Treasuries. Accordingly, with short-term rates still rising, the yield curve will invert soon; by mid-2019 says the bank. Morgan Stanley recommends investors to be overweight US Treasuries and underweight corporate credit.

FINSUM: The spread between two-years and ten-years is only 27 bp right now. We think it will much less than a year before an inversion, especially given the hawkishness of the Fed coupled with the threat of a trade war.

(New York)

Those who only pay causal attention to muni bonds might be scared away from the market by negative stories about big buildups in debt, bankruptcies, and a general erosion in credit quality. However, this year, nothing could be further from the truth. There has been a massive deleveraging of the sector in 2018, with total US muni bond issuance down a whopping 17% to-date, and on pace for 25% by the end of the year. The dearth of issuance has pushed yields down and prices up. “It’s a seller’s market”, says one muni bond analyst.

FINSUM: Part of the lack of new issuance is due to the federal tax changes, but nonetheless, the market is looking increasingly healthy.

(New York)

If there was one subset of stocks that looks deeply out of style right now, it has to be utilities. Back a few years ago, they were immensely hot as the stock market’s bond substitutes in an insanely low-yield era. Now, you can earn almost 2% on a short-term Treasury bond. However, it might be time to take another look at the sector. Most utilities are yielding about 3.3%, and have been supported over the last few weeks by the fact that bond yields have stopped rising. The sector’s stock prices have fallen just short of 10% since last September, but that means valuations look attractive, as do yields.

FINSUM: If you think yields won’t climb that much further—which we don’t, at least in the short to medium term—then utilities do seem like a good-yielding bargain.