Analysis Topic: Interest Rates and the Bond Market
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Friday, December 06, 2013
How to Develop a Trading System From Novive to Profitable Investor / Interest-Rates / Trading Systems
When it comes to becoming a successful investor or your, automated trading system development process for that matter, there are some big picture things that you must have figured out. Here are some tips that will help you get started in becoming a long term consistent and profitable trader, investor or automated trading system developer.
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Wednesday, December 04, 2013
How to Get Higher Interest Rates on Safer Bonds / Interest-Rates / Corporate Bonds
Steve McDonald writes: The bond market is a difficult place to earn a livable income during times of very low interest rates. The only way to earn a decent yield is to take risks on lower-quality bonds or to accept much longer maturity curves than good sense dictates.
But if you know where to look, there’s a virtually unknown feature in some bonds that can significantly increase your current income and beat the biggest threat to your money in the current bond market, while offering the increased level of safety that bonds are known for.
Wednesday, December 04, 2013
When Saving Interest Rates Go Negative / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
What is more frightening, then the loss of your money. Since most people have, some meager amount held in some form of a financial institution, the prospect of the banksters' cabal placing a charge against your account for the mere privilege of maintaining a deposit, is horrible. The Business Insider warns, In The Future, You May Have To Pay The Bank To Hold Your Money, and raises a very dreadful prospect.
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Tuesday, December 03, 2013
Is the Fed Increasingly Monetizing U.S.Government Debt? / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
Fed Chair Bernanke vehemently denies Fed “monetizes the debt,” but our research shows the Fed may be increasingly doing so. We explain why and what the implications may be for the dollar, gold and currencies.
What is debt monetization? A central bank is said to monetize a government’s debt if it helps to finance its deficit. The buying of Treasuries by the Federal Reserve is a clear indication that the Fed is doing just that, except that Bernanke argues the motivation behind Treasury purchases is to help the economy, not the government.
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Sunday, December 01, 2013
Why Traders Lose Money Trading Markets / Interest-Rates / Learn to Trade
How to turn your trading into a simple automated trading strategy: you know the difference among a winning and losing trade – we have all experienced both and know the excitement and the frustration associated with it.
The brutal honest truth is a tough pill to swallow. The fact that most of the time it’s not the strategy that has failed; it’s you (the trader) which is why you need a simple trading strategy drawn out on paper with detailed rules for you to follow.
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Sunday, December 01, 2013
Janet Yellen, U.S. Interest Rates and Market Psychology at Major Market Turns / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Janet Yellen just moved closer to her place in history when the Senate Banking Committee approved her nomination to lead the Federal Reserve. The full Senate is expected to confirm. If so, she will be the first chairwoman in the central bank's 100 year history.
But when her term concludes, gender may be secondary to the narrative about her time at the helm. The larger focus could be that Yellen was at the helm of economic disaster.
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Friday, November 29, 2013
How to Find Safe Yields in an Interest Rate Sensitive World / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
While Mr. Bernanke's policies have taken a toll on seniors and savers, his mere mention of the word "taper" last spring did us all a favor. It sent interest rates rising, bond and stock prices tumbling, and in the days that followed, the Fed went into damage control—quite a lot of hubbub for something the Fed was only pondering. What happens when they announce they actually did something?
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Monday, November 25, 2013
U.S. Money Supply Soars as Fed Eyes QE Taper / Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing
The money supply as measured by M2 is now rising at a 12.1% annualized rate, which is causing the fickle Fed to renew its threats about ending QE. The minutes released from the latest FOMC meeting indicate the tapering of asset purchases could once again begin within the next few meetings.
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Wednesday, November 20, 2013
How to Profit from Fed’s Easy Money Mistake by Shorting U.S. Treasury Bonds / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Mohammad Zulfiqar writes: The Federal Reserve has been very accommodative. Its goals are very simple: it wants economic growth in the U.S. economy. As a result, the Federal Reserve is taking extraordinary measures, printing $85.0 billion a month and using it to buy U.S. bonds and mortgage-backed securities (MBS). The hope is that the money will go to the banks, which will lend it to consumers who then spend it, leading to economic growth.
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Tuesday, November 19, 2013
A Requiem for the Bond Market / Interest-Rates / International Bond Market
The central banks of Japan and the U.S. are killing the private market for government debt. The massive and unprecedented bon-buying programs for Japanese Government Bonds (JGBs) and Treasuries have driven yields so low that investors are now simply stepping aside from involvement in that market entirely.
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Sunday, November 17, 2013
Code Red - The Unintended Consequences of ZIRP, Zero Interest Rates Policy / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
Yellen's coronation was this week. Art Cashin mused that it was a wonder some senator did not bring her a corsage: it was that type of confirmation hearing. There were a few interesting questions and answers, but by and large we heard what we already knew. And what we know is that monetary policy is going to be aggressively biased to the easy side for years, or at least that is the current plan. Far more revealing than the testimony we heard on Thursday were the two very important papers that were released last week by the two most senior and respected Federal Reserve staff economists. As Jan Hatzius at Goldman Sachs reasoned, it is not credible to believe that these papers and the thinking that went into them were not broadly approved by both Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen.
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Sunday, November 17, 2013
U.S. Treasury Bond Markets Snapshot Update / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Courtesy of Doug Short: What’s New: I’ve updated the charts below through today’s close. The yield on the 10-year note finished the week at 2.71%, which is 128 bps above its 1.43% all-time closing low on July 25th of last year but 13 bps below its interim closing high on September 5th.
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Friday, November 15, 2013
Keep Your Eye on Bonds / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Last month, Americans were transfixed by the amateur theatrics undertaken by the Washington political establishment in connection with the debt ceiling crisis. The bad faith, poor tactics and wholesale avoidance of reality were offered by all players in very large doses. When the Republican leadership finally capitulated (thereby bringing down the curtain on the tawdry production), it soon became apparent that sound and fury had signified nothing except another exercise in can kicking. Public approval of Congress sank to the lowest level on record, and has only dissipated due to the unmitigated disaster of the Obamacare launch. But as bad as domestic approval has become, the behavior of the U.S. government has played far worse internationally.
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Friday, November 15, 2013
Option Probabilities Spell Possible Trouble for U.S. Treasury Bonds / Interest-Rates / Options & Warrants
The incredible rally in equities in 2013 has begun to stir concern among many that the stock market is now in a bubble. We have entered the euphoric stage of this bull market and equity prices cannot and will not go lower according to some talking heads in the financial punditry.
While chatter is starting to heat up that equities are in a bubble, the real bubble seems to be ignored for the most part. The larger, more concerning bubble is in the Treasury marketplace where the Federal Reserve continues to print money to purchase treasury bonds to help keep interest rates artificially low.
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Tuesday, November 12, 2013
U.S. Treasury Ramps Up The Zimbabwe Style Money Printing Press / Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing
It looks like the U.S. Treasury is learning a few tricks from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe as it ramps up its printing press. In just a few years, the U.S. Department of Treasury Bureau of Engraving & Printing has substantially increased the printing of its largest valued Federal Reserve Note -- the $100 bill.
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Monday, November 11, 2013
The Fed’s Dilemma, What Would Yellen Do? / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
The US Senate Banking Committee will hold hearings on Thursday, November 14, on the nomination of Janet Yellen for Federal Reserve chair. There will be the usual softball questions, for example, "Do you think high unemployment is a problem in the United States and if so what do you intend to do about it?" (which allows a senator to express his concern over unemployment and for the nominee to agree that it's a problem). Or the always popular question, "What is the basis under which you would continue to hold interest rates at their current low level?" – as if she would answer anything other than, "Any future policy decision is of course data-dependent" or some variation on that response. Boring.
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Friday, November 08, 2013
Janet Yellen's Mission Impossible / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
Most market watchers expect that Janet Yellen will grapple with two major tasks once she takes the helm at the Federal Reserve in 2014: deciding on the appropriate timing and intensity of the Fed's quantitative easing taper strategy, and unwinding the Fed's enormous $4 trillion balance sheet (without creating huge losses in the value of its portfolio). In reality both assignments are far more difficult than just about anyone understands or admits.
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Monday, November 04, 2013
What the Fed Doesn't Want You to See / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
David Zeiler writes: Ever heard of the Taylor Rule?
Not many people have, but the folks at the U.S. Federal Reserve are very familiar with it - and they'd probably prefer that this highly respected guideline for the federal funds rate languish in obscurity.
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Monday, November 04, 2013
U.S. National Debt to Double from $17.0 trillion to $34.0 Trillion? / Interest-Rates / US Debt
Michael Lombardi writes:
Can it be true?
The U.S. Department of the Treasury has reported that for the federal government’s fiscal 2013 year, which ended on September 30, 2013, the U.S. government budget deficit was $680 billion—the smallest budget deficit in five years. (Source: Bureau of the Fiscal Service, October 30, 2013.)
Sunday, November 03, 2013
U.S. Treasury Yields in Perspective / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Courtesy of Doug Short: Let’s have a look at a long-term perspective on Treasury yields. The chart below shows the 10-Year Constant Maturity yield since 1962 along with the Federal Funds Rate (FFR) and inflation. The range has been astonishing. The stagflation that set in after the 1973 Oil Embargo was finally ended after Paul Volcker raised the FFR to 20.06%.
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