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What I meant to say was...

After a number of discussions with readers, there appears to have been some misunderstanding over my recent post (see The bond market tempts FAIT). I did not mean to imply that the advance in bond prices is an intermediate-term move, only a tactical counter-trend rally. The decline in Treasury yields can be attributable to:
  • The market's buy-in to the Fed's "transitory inflation" narrative, which was discussed extensively in the post;
  • Excessively short positioning by bond market investors, as shown by a JPMorgan Treasury client survey indicating that respondents were highly short duration, or price sensitivity to yield changes; and

  • A FOMO stampede by corporate defined-benefit pension plans. A recent study showed that pension plans were nearly fully funded from an actuarial viewpoint. Falling rates would raise the value of liabilities, and without asset-liability matching, pension plans were at risk of widening their funding gap.

In short,  the bond market rally is a tactical counter-trend rally. The combination of expansive fiscal and monetary policy will eventually put upward pressure on inflation and bond yields. 

That said, there are a number of pockets of uncorrelated opportunities for investors, regardless of how long Treasury yields stay down.
The full post can be found here.

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