The revenge of the bond vigilantes

 The Fed started cutting the Federal Funds Rate last September (DFF 5.33 then, 4.33 now), and average yields for notes and bonds started climbing and haven't stopped lol.

 

 

Amateur hour 2.0: Trump thinks he can tell the bond market what to do when not even the Fed can do that lol

Welcome to the party, pal.

 

yippee-ki-yay mofo

President Donald Trump says he’ll ‘demand that interest rates drop immediately’

Does this dope pay attention? Oh, that's right, he doesn't pay anyone.

Anyway, the Fed cut rates by a full point since the September meeting, and rates on bonds and notes soared anyway.

The Fed can't demand anything, but President Goofy Nuts pretends it can, and he can.

 

 

 

US Treasury yields are steepening and by duration are normalizing

 This is actually a good thing.

Longer dated securities should pay more than shorter, unlike most of 2024 when Bills paid far more.

Bills yields on average on Friday match the Daily Federal Funds rate exactly, falling in tandem with it in 2024 from the 5.33 range to 4.33 now. They've been pretty stable at this level for five weeks now.

The fall in Bills yields actually ran in front of the Fed decision to make the first rate cut in September by many months.

The fall commenced after May when the Fed announced it would institute a slight decrease to its tighter money policy through balance sheet operations involving UST beginning in June.

Bills yields fell hard for four months into September even as core inflation year over year remained flat at 2.7% over the period. Investors locked in higher but rapidly disappearing return.

Yields on Notes and Bonds also plunged, but against most predictions they rebounded in the face of the Fed rate cuts, which is quite amusing. Longs got their lunch eaten.

The simplest explanation is that longer dated securities anticipate more inflation, and the Fed simply pushes on a string. Bond vigilantes demanded more return for the rising risk.

People who didn't appreciate fixed income turning into a casino like the stock market hid out in cash and did just fine. VMRXX returned 5.24% last year.

There are over $6 trillion in T-bills outstanding at the end of 2024 vs. $2 trillion to start 2018, out of a total of approximately $28 trillion total UST outstanding.

Unfortunately for buyers of houses and cars, long money is going to cost you more, as yields on Notes and Bonds climb again in anticipation of recalcitrant inflation and increased deficit spending under Trump.

The average four year new auto loan was 9.36% and the 30-year mortgage 6.93% last week.

 

US Treasury yields making new highs for this cycle as of Oct 19, 2023

Massive Treasury issuance to pay for massive pandemic spending has driven yields higher.

 

It's the law of supply and demand: Increase the supply of US Treasury debt and the price goes down.

 

Previously issued securities paying lower interest rates drop in price because they are much more plentiful in comparison with the new issues paying higher rates which investors demand.

 

Who wants 'em?

 

Banks are estimated to be stuck with these dogs in quantities approaching what the Fed has let roll off, which is what they also must do. The collateral backing banks, insurance companies, pension funds, et cetera et cetera et cetera, suffers.  

The Federal Reserve Bank's role as a big buyer in the bond market has been curtailed since 2Q2022, removing its big price support role. As of 3Q2023 the balance sheet is down $768 billion as securities mature. That's about $51 billion rolling off per month, and no net buying to replace it.

 

The Fed has also raised the Federal Funds Rate to an average of 5.33 to combat inflation.

 

So yields have risen for such reasons to these records for this cycle to date, but it's all predicated on the US Treasury having to dilute the supply:

 

1MO 6.02 5/26/23 (debt ceiling disagreement)

3MO 5.63 10/6/23

6MO 5.61 8/25/23

1Y    5.49  9/27/23

 

2Y 5.19 10/17/23

3Y 5.03 10/18/23

5Y 4.95 10/19/23

7Y 5.00 10/19/23

10Y 4.98 10/19/23

 

20Y 5.30 10/19/23

30Y 5.11 10/19/23.

In the aggregate as of Oct 20 yields are up a net 22% year over year to an average of 5.25692 from 4.30846 when all the wizards of smart said they couldn't possibly go any higher without breaking something.

They're still saying that.

 

US pandemic debt orgy described as fiscal slippage lol

It's so indicative of our degeneracy how economic profligacy must not be described that way in this day and age where anything and everything is great, awesome, and epic but that.

Oh well, at least they still pay a modicum of respect with huge, swelled, and deluge.

If only all that cash were a tsunami, inundating the shore with ruinous inflation.

 

 

 

CNBC, here:

. . . investors are also pricing in surprising economic resilience alongside fiscal slippage.

 The U.S. federal government ended its fiscal year in September with a fiscal deficit of almost $1.7 trillion, the Treasury Department announced on Friday, adding to a huge national debt totaling $33.6 trillion. The country’s debt has swelled by more than $10 trillion since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in the first quarter of 2020, prompting a deluge of fiscal stimulus to help prop up the economy.

I watched Die Hard on Christmas Eve

 It was much dumber than I remember, but then so was I back in the day.

It turns out that Roger Ebert's review here captured what's wrong with the film.

The review in THE GRAUNIAD here is just laughable.

Yippee-ki-yay. 

 

The entire US Treasury yield curve bows and worships at the feet of the 1-year Treasury for an eighth day now, and you know what that means

 When the upstart 1-year tries to compete with the long end, you in for a heap a trouble boy.

Yippee-ki-yay.

Rock-bottom yielding 30-year US Treasury from two years ago sold at pandemic sky-high price sells at a 50% discount

Yippee-ki-yay.

 

Bond vigilantes on the move everywhere

 Yippee-ki-yay.

 

 

I would like to come back as the bond market . . . You can intimidate everybody

 Yippee-ki-yay.

 

 

Long US Treasury and Investment Grade bonds both made new 52-week lows again last night

Yippee-ki-yay.

 

Bond vigilantes be like . . .

 Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.

 

Self-hating, America-hating liberal Peter Fonda finally gets his death wish: of lung cancer at 79

Peter Fonda has wanted to die at least since 1969, when a loose-triggered good ole boy decided he had to kill the witness too, and blow Fonda's character Wyatt away with a shotgun off his motorcycle in the final scene of Easy Rider. Wyatt's partner Billy had the wrong hair cut, you see, and the bad Yankee manners of the wrong hand gesture to go with it, while Wyatt had the wrong flag painted on the gas tank of his chopper and helmet. The Yankee fu was answered with the rebel yells of a twelve gauge. 

Fonda repeated the performance in 1974's little-remarked Open Season as the character Ken, when the father played by William Holden hunts Ken down and kills him. Ken is a sick-in-the-head Vietnam vet who otherwise appears to lead a normal life but abducts and abuses, then releases and hunts and kills humans two weeks every year for sport with his buddies. As young men before the war they had raped Holden's daughter. She had had a child as a result, raised by the Holden character, and ended up in a mental institution. The Yankee fu was answered with the rebel yell of a vigilante's hunting rifle. 

What Fonda couldn't bring himself to do with a gun in real life, he did to himself with drugs. For one reviewer of his 1998 Don't Tell Dad: A Memoir, too much of it "is a catalog of dope smoked". All along the real fu was to himself.