With US 10-year bond yields around 1.25% (as of Thursday July 22) the question is, what is the bond market telling us?
Some say the bond market is pointing to stagflation from 2022 and beyond. Others say yields will rise because of inflation, and that these low yields are “transitory”. Other say the low yields point to the continuation of the pandemic with the Delta variant.
Then there are others who think at the bond market is not telling us anything anymore. The low yields we are seeing, despite inflation, are probably a reaction to the liquidity created by central banks. Let us not forget at the Fed the ECB and the Bank of Japan are all continuing to create liquidity at a record pace. So maybe the bond market it is not telling us anything anymore because it can’t.
So where does this leave equities? The answer is by themselves. Stocks do not have bonds to give them a hint of what might happen in the future. And while analysts, economists, and pundits alike are all confused about what the bond market is saying, it’s probably safe to say we should not look to bonds for any kind of direction.
The bottom line is that market participants are very confused as to what the bond market is saying. This confusion stems from the fact at the bond market is giving us conflicting signals based on what we have been conditioned to think for many years now. Maybe low bond yields are a bad omen for global growth, or perhaps not. One thing is true, this is not your grandfather’s bond market.
