Bond Yields: The Wheel Has Not Been Rediscovered

Perhaps market results and dynamics can be quantified as math within a game, but at the end of the day it is behavioral sentiment that drives market forces and the way financial institutions react. Psychology can be looked at as the reaction via the marketing/influence of policy positions and presentation.

We have been down this road before. The decision to announce a round of quantitative easing yesterday via Treasury/Fed intervention should be compared to what the same team did a couple of weeks ago regarding its powerplay with the Bank of Japan in order to make the JPY stronger. We are now in a definite cycle in which government institutions are battling investors to stop momentum in certain assets when policies have gone bad.

The wheel has not been reinvented. It may seem like an unfair advantage to traders betting against government policies that are interpreted (correctly) as being misguided or unwise, but these are the rules of the game. Large players who have been betting on U.S Treasury yields to increase were likely not happy yesterday, but they should have known the U.S government would not sit idly and simply allow an implosion of the financial system to occur.

Having said the above, now we can look towards the realm of unintended consequences. The U.S Dollar Index dove yesterday with USD centric weakness and gold soared. And as long as folks refuse to buy U.S long-term Treasuries on the cheap and demand higher interest rates to protect their investments the potential of further unintended consequences will occur. 

Scott Bessent handled the situation perhaps correctly yesterday, but he is dealing with symptoms and not the cause of the virus. A lack of clarity clouds global central banks and monetary policies connected to their interest rates. Inflation concerns persists and so does the debate regarding how to battle this illness.

The U.S Fed and Chair Kevin Warsh have a major task ahead regarding interest rate policy.  And government’s – particularly the U.S – have to decide if they can actually stop the bleeding. For the moment this appears to be a tall order because by injecting digital money into U.S long-term bonds the U.S is spending money that it really doesn’t have, except to say that this is a game of chicken in some respects and financial institutions could be faced with the dilemma of cutting off their nose to spite their face. Where are Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman when you need them?