Category: US Bonds
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Monday, January 26, 2009
U.S. Treasury Bonds Expected to Bounce After Sharp Sell-off / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
The bond market appears to be settling down into a trading range after the sharp rally during the last 2 months of 2008. The Long Bond traded to its lowest level in nearly 2 months. My favoured scenario is that the market recovers a bit during the next 2 weeks and then it trades lower. Before that happens, traders need to deal with record size 2 and 5 Year Treasury Note auctions early in the week.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, January 22, 2009
U.S. Treasury Bond Market Forecast 2009 / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
The explosive long T-bond rally of November and December 2008 following deep U.S. interest rate cuts towards ZERO appears to have come to an end as treasury bonds broke below the most recent low. Therefore this analysis seeks to determine if the bond bubble is about to burst and how bonds could trend during the next 5 months of 2009.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Are Inflation Proof TIPS Breathtakingly Cheap? / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Inflation backed securities have been on a good run since November. Some still suggest that TIPS Are "Breathtakingly Cheap" .At a time when central banks are attempting to prevent deflation, the hottest investments in the government bond market are securities that protect debt holders against rising consumer prices.
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Tuesday, January 20, 2009
UltraShort TBT ETF Benefiting from U.S. Treasuries Decline / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
The long end of the bond market, and the TLT's (Barclay's 20+ Year T-bond, ETF), are getting hurt today, despite a climbing US dollar. The TBT's (Proshares Ultrashort T-bond, ETF) is benefiting from the price action.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Treasury Bonds Are the Key in 2009 / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
In 2008, the market that was the trigger for other markets was the currency market. The bottom in the dollar led to a peak in commodities and helped spur massive deleveraging and selling of various holdings. For certain, the increasing strength of the Yen also caused great damage to the global economy and global capital markets. There were only a handful of places to hide, free of volatility and immediate risk. Either you owned government bonds, the dollar or the yen. Gold advanced in 2008, though with extreme volatility compared to other safe-havens.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, January 19, 2009
U.S. Treasury Bond Market Enters 2009 Trading Range / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
The bond market appears to be settling down into a trading range after the sharp rally during the last 2 months of 2008. The Long Bond essentially recovered the losses from the previous week. The financial sector continues to unravel and the effects are translating into massive problems for the global economy.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, January 15, 2009
The Trading Opportunity of 2009 Shorting U.S. Treasury Bonds / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
In a previous post on long term Treasury bonds, I reviewed some of the technical factors that have me bearish. "So it is highly likely, from this perspective, that Treasury bonds will be an under performing asset class over the next 12 months. But more importantly, will this market top lead to an investing opportunity (i.e., by shorting Treasury bonds)? In other words, will the market top lead to a secular trend change in Treasury bonds?"Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, January 15, 2009
U.S. Treasury Bond Bubble in Trouble? / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
If you have not yet read about the ominous U.S. Treasury bubble (which has been around for awhile ), here is recent a recap:“Risk-free return” is the standard tag attached to the government's solemn obligations. An investor I know, repulsed by prevailing government yields, has a timelier description – “return-free risk”.James Grant – December 4, 2008
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Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Ultra-Short Treasury Bond ETF Heading Sharply Higher / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Below is what I wrote about the ProShares UltraShort 20-year T-Bond ETF (AMEX: TBT) exactly 24 hours ago, which appears to have unfolded pretty close to expectations. If the pattern continues to unfold as I expect, the TBT should hold between 39.00 and 38.50 ahead of a potent upleg that continues the advance off of the 12/18 low at 35.51.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, January 12, 2009
Bond Market Plunges as Yields Move Sharply Higher / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
The bond market traded off for 2 weeks after 8 consecutive weeks of substantial gains. The pullback was sharp, but insignificant relative to the magnitude of the unprecedented move that the long bond futures made over the past 2 months. As expected, once the yearend buying demand was out of the way, the bong bond cracked in a significant fashion. Last week the market faced the same tug of war that is likely to dominate the market going forward: supportive fundamental news countered by increasing supply concerns. During the first full trading week of the year, the bears won the battle in spite of relatively successful Treasury Note auctions.Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, January 09, 2009
The Fed’s U.S. Treasuries Bubble Trouble / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
A few weeks ago when the Fed announced a strategy designed to bring down long-term interest and home mortgage rates through unlimited Treasury bond purchases, government debt staged a spectacular rally. To the unschooled market observer, the spike may be difficult to understand. After all, why would the value of Treasury bonds rise while their underlying credit quality is deteriorating faster than Bernie Madoff’s social schedule? The move is actually a perfect illustration of the tried and true Wall Street strategy of “buy the rumor and sell the fact”.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, January 08, 2009
U.S. Treasury Bills, Can you hear the Bond Market POP!? / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Keynesian capitalism continues to bring with it a saga of never ending bubbles. In just the past decade, we have been faced with the internet bubble bursting of 2000 and a massive real estate bubble that has brought the American economy to its knees. All are examples of a gross misallocation of resources caused by an excess money supply searching for home. The recent credit crunch has provided us with an opportunity to deflate and wipe away all unnecessary liquidity but the Federal Reserve, along with their posy of world bankers, have chosen instead to attempt to reflate a balloon that has already burst. Turning on all the world's liquidity taps has thus far proven to be working. We have beaten down the “evil” that is deflation and we look forward to an era of continued inflation. Inflation that will, undoubtedly, spiral out of control and potentially lead to a period of hyper-inflation.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Your Country Needs You to Buy Government Bonds / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
"Are you 100% American? Prove it! Buy US government bonds..." - Poster from the US Treasury promoting the Third Liberty Loan, 1918
THE BRITISH PRIME MINISTER, David Lloyd George, joked in 1915 that it was Britain's political and financial stability which would always enable it to raise "the last million".
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Wednesday, January 07, 2009
U.S. Dollar Dead Bounce Ends, Treasury Bond Bubble Begins to Dissipate / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
The marquee line best describing the past two to three months has been that the Dollar Death Dance has been fueled by failure of US banks & corporations, along with sponsored assaults against speculative hedge funds. The climate has changed from liquidation and bankruptcies, obviously steered and exploited by the Powerz, toward more legitimate attempts to have a recovery initiative take root across the landscape, It is fast approaching a wasteland. The most vivid signal of market manipulation, intended to benefit the USGovt borrowing costs, and designed to promote the totally false notion of a Flight to Safety, has been the USTreasury bubble.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Long-term U.S. Treasury Bonds Update / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
I have been bearish on long term Treasury bonds long before it was fashionable, and this past week, Barron's has a cover story on Treasuries entitled, "Get Out Now!" It is their belief that "the bubble in Treasuries looks ready to pop, sending prices on government debt sharply lower."Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
U.S. Treasury Bond Bubble Bursting? / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
They've done it now. The Fed has revealed the level of panic they are in behind the scenes by cutting rates to zero and promising unbounded quantitative easing . Here, it should be noted that based on remarks from the Fed Policy Statement Tuesday, quantitative easing is now set to go beyond the bailout style monetiziations of financials that have primarily characterized re-inflation efforts under the gaze of Bernanke and Paulson so far to include just about anybody who needs ‘social assistance', which apparently includes all degrees of bad investors / speculators these days. Make a bad investment. No worries if you're an American apparently as ‘the check is in the mail'.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, January 05, 2009
U.S. Treasury Bond Bubble Primed for Inevitable Crash / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
As Treasury Bill yields fell during the early 1930's, Treasury Bonds moved in the opposite direction . As you can see from Table 48 (also from A History of Interest Rates ), Bonds rose in yield (fell in price) during the banking crises of 1930-32.Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, January 02, 2009
U.S. Treasury Bond Bubble Ripe for Explosion / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Bonds in 2009: A Tough Call - The second half of 2008 will be remembered as the era in which justifiably panicked investors fled the global equity markets and flooded into the bond markets, particularly the U.S. Treasury market. As I write this, the migration largely continues.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, December 29, 2008
Investment Opportunity in Municipal Bonds / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
We all know that 2008 has been a rough year for virtually all investors, and the municipal market has not been immune. Municipals, however, have weathered the storm better than most asset classes.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, December 29, 2008
Grossly Overbought Bond Markets Continue Chugging Higher into New Year / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
The bond market just keeps on chugging higher. Yields on the 30 year Treasury Bond decreased for an 8th consecutive week as the Long Bond future continues its unstoppable march higher. There are a couple of undercurrents that I would like to discuss heading into the New Year.Read full article... Read full article...