Treasury yields resumed their downward slide — with the benchmark 10-year note’s falling to the lowest level since Sept. 1 — after the latest sign of labor-market cooling bolstered bets that a Federal Reserve shift to policy easing isn’t far off.
A torrid bond market rally shows traders are convinced the Federal Reserve’s rate-rising cycle is over. The debate now turns to when central bankers start cutting, and by how much.
In a year in which little has gone right in the US bond market, November turned out to be a month for the record books.
US regulators’ swift action in March to ring-fence the banking sector after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank might have had an unintended consequence of driving cash out of bond funds, by enhancing the appeal of deposits.
The world’s biggest bond market has clawed its way back after spending chunks of 2023 underwater. Now many US debt watchers see the pathway clearing for a real revival.
The Treasury Department’s top domestic finance official said the US government debt market has functioned well during a year of outsized interest-rate volatility, a regional banking crisis and the recent hack of the world’s largest bank.
A normal day for markets became something extraordinary after a hotly anticipated report on US inflation gave traders the greenlight to declare that the Federal Reserve’s most aggressive interest-rate hiking cycle in decades is over.
It’s the buzz word on Wall Street and in the hallways of the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department. It’s blamed for triggering bond selloffs, shifts in debt auctions and interest-rate policy.
Hoisington Investment Management Co. was pummeled by its bullish stance on US bonds in recent years, driving its Treasury fund to some of the industry’s biggest losses as the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes sent prices tumbling.
A prospect that might have seemed unthinkable just a couple short weeks ago is coming into view for bond traders: The potential for US Treasuries to post an annual gain for the first time since 2020.
The selloff in US debt appears close to being over as the Federal Reserve nears winding up its most aggressive rate hikes in a generation.
The US Treasury increased its planned sales of longer-term securities by slightly less than most major dealers expected in its quarterly debt-issuance plan, in a move that signals officials may be concerned about the surge in yields over the past several months.
The US Treasury reduced its estimate for federal borrowing for the current quarter thanks to stronger-than-expected revenues, offering some relief for investors concerned about the rapidly widening fiscal deficit.
The worst selloff of longer-term Treasuries in more than four decades is putting a spotlight on the market’s biggest missing buyer: the Federal Reserve.
On Monday, the 10-year Treasury yield climbed over 5%, a 16-year high. It’s a level few would have predicted during the long run of rock-bottom interest rates that followed the Great Financial Crisis.
Treasury-market liquidity has mostly righted itself since the dislocations caused by the several regional bank failures in March, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York economist.
Bond investors are coalescing around a segment of the Treasuries market that offers a measure of protection from this year’s brutal rout and also positions them for the recession that some still anticipate.
Bond investors face the crucial decision of just how much risk to take in Treasuries with 10-year yields at the highest in more than a decade and the Federal Reserve signaling it’s almost done raising rates.
The resilience of the world’s biggest bond market is top priority as US debt officials prepare to start buying back government debt, according to Josh Frost, the Treasury Department’s assistant secretary for financial markets.
Bond traders are bracing for Treasury yields to keep pushing higher after the Federal Reserve signaled it’s likely to hold interest rates at lofty levels well into next year.
US five- and 10-year yields rose to the highest levels since 2007 after hotter-than-anticipated inflation data in Canada and rising oil prices added to global concerns about resurgent price pressures.
Federal Reserve policymakers’ updated forecasts for their benchmark interest rate, due Wednesday, are looming as a key potential decider for a US Treasuries market at risk of a third straight year of losses.
The Federal Reserve has now offloaded about $1 trillion of its bond holdings since it began working down its bloated balance sheet last year, with no sign of the kinds of strains in financial markets that spooked policymakers the last time they oversaw such a program.
Jerome Powell has the bond market exactly where he wants it: lacking conviction as to the Federal Reserve’s next steps.
The US bond-market selloff resumed Monday, driving 10-year yields to a 16-year high, as the persistently resilient economy has investors positioning for interest rates to remain elevated even after the Federal Reserve winds up its hikes.
If they’d been offered today’s economy a year ago – with inflation downgraded from emergency to mere headache, still-low unemployment, and growth that’s slowed without stalling – the world’s top central bankers would’ve taken it like a shot.
Convinced a recession in the US was near, some of the world’s most prominent money managers loaded up on government bonds this year in a bold bet that would atone for the punishing losses suffered in 2022.
All around the world, bond traders are finally coming to the realization that the rock-bottom yields of recent history might be gone for good.
Across Wall Street, there’s growing relief that the Federal Reserve — at long last — may be done raising interest rates. But that doesn’t mean turbulence in the bond market will soon become a thing of the past.
Bond investors who have repeatedly gotten burned buying 20-year Treasuries since the US government reintroduced them in 2020 appear willing to conclude that this time will be different.
Bulging sales of US Treasuries are about to deliver a major test of investor demand and determine whether a selloff has room to run, as the market braces for the biggest round of refunding auctions since last year.
The US Treasury boosted the size of its quarterly bond sales for the first time in 2 1/2 years to help finance a surge in budget deficits so alarming it prompted Fitch Ratings to cut the government’s AAA credit rating a day earlier.
The US Treasury boosted the size of its quarterly sale of longer-term debt for the first time in over 2 1/2 years, testing dealers’ appetites amid an increase in government borrowing needs so alarming it spurred Fitch Ratings to cut the US sovereign rating from AAA.
The US Treasury boosted its estimate for federal borrowing for the current quarter as it addresses a deteriorating fiscal deficit and keeps replenishing its cash buffer.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday appeared to give traders the positive signal they’ve been waiting for — that the central bank may finally be wrapping up its steepest interest-rate hikes since the early 1980s.
Listen to Wall Street’s top economists and you’ll hear the same message again and again: The risk of a recession is fading fast. And yet, in the bond market, the traditional warning that a downturn is near — an inversion of the yield curve — keeps getting louder.
Traders now have no doubt: the Federal Reserve will start raising interest rates once again next week.
Investors loading up on long-term bonds have a history at their back.
The bond market’s re-energized bulls may want to dial down their excitement because their fortunes hinge on whether an abstract, almost elusive number, is as low as they assume.
Tucked away in hours of congressional testimony by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell last month was an admission that the central bank was blindsided by the impact of shrinking its balance sheet four years ago.
Bond traders are bracing for another tumultuous week in which key employment data could push yields on 10-year Treasuries toward 4%, a level that market watchers see luring investors into government debt.
The barrage of fresh Treasury bills poised to hit the market over the next few months is merely a prelude to what’s yet to come: a wave of longer-term debt sales that are seen driving bond yields even higher.
The risks for bond investors from next week’s Federal Reserve meeting go well beyond whether officials decide to raise interest rates again.
Two years after inflation surged, the Federal Reserve has made limited progress tamping it down. A coterie of investors in the bond market is betting not only that policymakers will win, but that they’re right in anticipating the era of low long-term interest rates will return.
For over a year, bond traders have been whipsawed by uncertainty about how high the Federal Reserve will push interest rates.
Bond-market titans BlackRock Inc., Pacific Investment Management Co. and Vanguard Group Inc. are warning that recent violent swings in US Treasuries are only the beginning of a new era of volatility that’s here to stay until central banks conquer inflation.
Looming behind market fears over the prospect of a historic US default is the less-discussed risk of what would follow a deal to resolve the debt-ceiling impasse.
When March’s bank failures ignited a historic bond rally, few, if any, made more money than Josh Barrickman. His army of funds gained roughly $26 billion, the equivalent of more than $1 billion in paper profits every single trading session.
Jarred by daily double-digit moves in Treasury yields, bond investors are bracing for at least another year of rocky trading, abandoning hopes that in 2023 the market would return to normality.
Markets have been trading as if the end of the world is at hand – but what most participants see, behind the recent financial turmoil and contagion fears, is a still-strong US economy, the MLIV Pulse survey shows.
