It worries me when any asset moves too quickly–either up or down. Long-term rallies pauses for a breather from time to time. So do big moves to the down. Like that we’re seeing at the long end of the Treasury bond market right now. The yield on the 10-year Treasury closed at 1.71% today, up another 7 basis points on the day. And now up 42 basis points in one month.
Two indexes will tell you what you need to know about today’s stock market action. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, driven by cyclicals, vaccine recovery, and consumer stocks rose to an intraday record high. After a slight retreat at the end of the session, the Dow finished ahead 0.97% on the day. The NASDAQ Composite, on the other hand, weighed down by technology and growth momentum stocks dropped 2.41% on the day to fall into a full correction from the February 12 closing high.
At 3:30 p.m. New York time today, March 3, the yield on the 10-year Treasury was 1.47%. That’s up from yesterday’s 1.42%. So much for any thoughts that yesterday’s rally in bonds and drop in yields might be the beginning of a larger move.
Stocks are neither moving ahead to follow up on yesterday’s big gains. Nor selling off under the wave of profit taking. Given the news calendar on Thursday and Friday that’s about what I’d expect. We’re due for a bushel of potentially market-moving news on those two days. And I’d be surprised if anyone wants to get too far ahead of those announcements.
The odds are that the bond market will snap back this week as traders decide that the drop in the price of the 10-year Treasury (and the climb in yield) has been too far and too fast. (A drop in Treasury yields would be likely to send stocks higher, reversing the trend of the last week.)I don’t think that reverses the trend beyond a week’s bounce, however. The $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus/relief bill still scares the bond market with the possibility of an uptick in inflation (finally) and the possibility that the package migh work and actually put the economy on the path to a sustained recovery. (And why might that be a bad thing, you ask: Because a clearly sustained recovery would incline the Federal Reserve to end, or at least scale back, its monthly purchase of $120 billion in Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities.)On Friday the yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 1.40% as bond prices rose. That was an 11 basis point drop on the day and it could well be a harbinger of a bounce for Treasuries this coming week.
Yields on U.S. Treasuries hit 1.61% early today before pulling back slightly to 1.51% as of 3 p.m. New York time. It’s not just the rise in yields or even the magnitude of the increase that has so disconcerted the bond market today, February 25. It’s the speed of the move. As of 3 p.m., the bond market was looking at a 14 basis point increase in yields just today. That’s a huge move for the normally slow-moving bond market.
Simple rules of supply and demand say that plans by the Biden administration for a $1.9 trillion package of coronavirus stimulus/relief and proposals to spend another $2 trillion on infrastructure should be driving up yields on government bonds (and driving down prices.) Investors want more reward–higher yields–in return for buying more Treasuries and taking on the risk that all this supply will push Treasury prices lower. But the bond market is hardly ever as simple as it looks and there are other trends at work that you ought to figure into your investment calculations.
10-year Treasury yield hits 1.30% even as stocks drop with rates hitting peak from before the March 2020 pandemic panic
In today’s YouTube Video “Avoiding Di-Worsification in 2021 in argued that the trend toward high yields on long-dated Treasuries–and thus lower prices for those bonds–should prompt investors to look beyond bonds and gold in their efforts to build diversified portfolios. I’m adding a copper miners ETF to my Millennial Portfolio tomorrow as a replacement for gold and to profit from the increased copper demand resulting from larger numbers of electric cars on the road over the next decade
Thursday action by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to terminate the Federal Reserve’s access to $195 billion in backup funding on December 31 will just increase the volatility in a bond market that was already experiencing a tug of war between expectations for faster growth in 2021 (and hence higher interest rates and lower bond prices) and worries about an economic slowdown in the coronavirus economy and Congressional inaction on any virus stimulus package (and hence lower interest rates and higher bond prices.) The tug of war will play out in the short holiday week which packs big funding activities by the Treasury into the first two days of the week. Monday and Tuesday will see the auction of nearly $200 billion in 2-year, 5-year, and 7-year Treasuries.
