Analysis Topic: Interest Rates and the Bond Market
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Bank of England’s Rate Raising Cycle Is Far From Over! / Interest-Rates / UK Interest Rates
Today we saw the O.N.S. (Office of National Statistics) release the C.P.I. and the R.P.I. for the month of June. The C.P.I. or the consumer price index came out at a 2.4% year on year rate and actually dropped from 2.5% in May but the financial markets were expecting a drop to 2.3%, while the R.P.I. or the retail price index came out at 4.4% year on year which was on the back of an expected decrease from 4.3% to 4.2%.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
US Bond Market and Interest Rates Quarterly Review and Outlook - Second Quarter 2007 / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
This week in Outside the Box, we take a closer look at the bond market and its underlying drivers. HMIC's Van Hoisington and Dr. Lacy Hunt anticipate lower inflationary pressures on account of faltering consumer spending and further deterioration in the housing market.Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, July 13, 2007
When Bad Debts Attack - Japan a Warning to the US Fed / Interest-Rates / Credit Crunch
"...Memo to the US Fed: When the Dollar collapse comes, you might not get chance to even give money away..."
BEN BERNANKE has his helicopter. John Maynard Keynes had old bottles buried in coal mines.
And the Japanese government? How can Tokyo dish out free money and put an end to deflation, that horror of falling prices and wages?
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Friday, July 13, 2007
Bond Market - Time to Face the Music / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
This week, bond rating agencies Moody's and Standard & Poor's finally announced downgrades on billions of dollars of bonds backed by subprime mortgages. Though the cuts will certainly not reflect the full weakness of the bonds, and will not include nearly as many issues as they should, they nevertheless amount to the beginning of the end of the phony mortgage investment market and the unrealistically high home prices that it helped support.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Hyperinflation and the Bond Markets / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Here's one for all you economic philosophers and "bond market vigilante"-types. The question I'm currently turning over in my mind is this: can the U.S. experience hyperinflation, or will the possibility of such an extreme inflationary spiral be held in check by the bond markets?The current thinking on the possibility of the United States experiencing hyperinflation seems to be split between those who say it can (and likely will at some point in the future), and those who feel it cannot, for precisely the reason stated above.
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Thursday, July 12, 2007
CDO - Compound Damage Orgy / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Collateralized Debt Obligations are the CDO bonds under fire, soon to suffer huge losses, subject of debt downgrades, object of failed auctions. We are talking about hundreds of billion$ in bond losses. A vicious circle has begun, sure to continue for a length of time ten times greater than what is expected, like into 2010. Home values are on the decline, the basis collateral for such asset-backed bonds, some of which hold car loan portfolios also in trouble. Homeowner defaults are on the decline, the basis income for such asset-backed bonds. The foreclosure process will aggravate the already swollen supply of homes. Hedge fund collapse will aggravate the already shaky supply of CDO & mortgage bonds. This is a worst case scenario unfolding on a horrific scale.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
The Dash for Cash Goes Global / Interest-Rates / Global Financial System
"...How much intangible debt now needs to be squeezed into how much real money...?"
IS THIS WHAT a credit crunch feels like on the ground? Way behind the curve of my own domestic finances as ever, I've been trying to raise a fresh mortgage on my house – well, for around half of its outstanding value, at least.
In fact, I'm just one of 750,000 borrowers in the United Kingdom about to come out of a two-year fixed deal to find interest rates have risen from 4.50% to 5.75% since late 2005 – and all of the lenders I've approached just raised their rates.
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Sunday, July 08, 2007
Interest Rate Rises - Bank of England Today, European Central Bank in September? / Interest-Rates / ECB Interest Rates
As widely expected, the Bank of England (BOE) raised its policy rate by 25 basis points to 5.75% this week. This represents a cumulative increase of 125 basis points in a year's time. Although the European Central Bank (ECB) held its policy rate steady at 4.00%, its president, Claude Trichet, hinted that there would be more rate increases in the not-too-distant future.Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Where is the Real Risk in the Subprime Debacle? / Interest-Rates / Credit Crunch
In this issue:
Honey, I Bet the Farm
Five Cents on the Dollar
Not Your Mother's AAA
Five Cents on the Dollar
Credit Default Swaps? Who Is the Counter-Party?
So, Where's the Problem?
La Jolla, London, and Denmark
This week we continue to look at an alphabet soup of problems: RMBSs, CDOs, Alt-A, BBB and - a new acronym to put on your radar screen - the very useful CDS. When does an AAA rating not mean an offering is ready for prime time? What type of contagion are we seeing from the Bear Stearns blow-up? I survey my friends in the hedge funds space, trying to find some evidence of cracks in the foundation, and let you know what I hear. We will again look at a wide variety of items and see if we can discern some connections.
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Thursday, July 05, 2007
Garbage Bonds and Bonfires / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
HOLIDAY
In keeping with the Independence Day holiday, a preface is offered. The irony is stiff as a board, as thick as a fog, as ugly as a pig. Citizens in the Untied States have never seen such a broad, deep, palpable threat to their liberty, this time from within, in terms of the system and its leadership. Dependence, the opposite of the celebrated theme, is running strong. The corporate agenda takes a one-day holiday. Refer to waging war, deceiving the masses, selling out the Middle Class, undermining the institutions, and rendering any threat to systemic reform as anti-business or unpatriotic.
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Wednesday, July 04, 2007
UK Interest Rates To Rise to 5.75 percent as a Consequence of Excessive Expansion of Money Supply / Interest-Rates / UK Interest Rates
The Bank of England is expected to raise UK interest rates tomorrow from 5.50% to 5.75%. This is inline with the Market Oracle two year forecast for UK interest rates to hit 5.75% by Sept 07.
The Money Markets are pricing in a rise in UK interest rates, with the Pound hitting a new 26 year high against the US Dollar trading towards $2.02, and the 3 month Inter bank rate rallying to a near 6 year high of 5.96%.
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Friday, June 29, 2007
Absolute Bond Contagion to Hit Financial Markets / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
When the contagion (denied no longer) is systemic, pervasive, broad, multi-faceted, and ominous in its lethal potential, perhaps one can calmly conclude that the system is merely adjusting to a total change in the seas. NO WAY !!! Without much doubt whatsoever, Bear Stearns is GROUND ZERO for the bond market firestorm.
BS was forced to extend $3.2 billion in loans to its hedge fund clients, who attempted to liquidate but could not. That represents 25% of the BS entire capital. Don't worry. Both hedge funds will eventually die, but when they do, BS will possibly die with them. A few months time is all they bought. Call it a STAY OF EXECUTION in legal parlance.
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Monday, June 25, 2007
Will The US Bond Market Break The Camel's Back? / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
“Bond shockwaves to ripple through U.S.” was the big, bold headline that greeted readers of the Financial Times newspaper following the recent bond sell-off and corresponding rise in yields. “A sell-off in the financial markets this week could have serious implications for the whole economy, says Krishna Guha.” Pretty dramatic stuff to say the least. But that's to be expected as the news media uses the latest financial “crisis of the week” to scare the average investor into believing financial collapse is imminent.Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, June 22, 2007
Ain’t No Yield High Enough / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Now that yields on ten-year Treasuries have cracked through 5%, on their way to infinity and beyond, many on Wall Street are wondering how high rates must go before bonds begin to draw investors away from stocks.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Rising US Bond Yields - The Big Picture / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
We have had a lot of inquiries about rising bond yields because they have been making the market jittery. So this morning we will do an in depth look at the 30 year bond yields to show you what significant event has happened and what the current situation looks like.
Chart 1: First, let's look at the big picture on bond yields from 1999 to June 2007.
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Thursday, June 21, 2007
Bond Convexity From Mortgages Means Higher Interest Rates / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
The cancer that is mortgage bonds does not linger in isolation. Everything in the bond world is connected to almost everything in the bond world, at least within the US sphere of speculative madness. The financial credit market is a confusing jumble of speculation, risk reducing hedges, and leveraged insanity found mainly in the hedge fund arena. Mortgages are causing problems from their bond hedge schemes, both on the loan portfolio side and the bond security side. Always one should consider both, and never are they inseparable. The only separable aspect is who the loser is nowadays.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Interest Rate Rises - Damned If You Do... / Interest-Rates / Money Supply
"...The central bank in New Zealand now presents the absurd spectacle of raising its lending rates while trying to depress its own currency by selling it in the open market..."
IF YOU WORRY that the US Fed might be caught between a rock and a hard place – squeezed between inflation on one side and plunging house prices on the other – then pity the poor central bankers in London and Auckland .
Every time they raise their interest rates, house prices increase!
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Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Effect of Rising Interest Rates on World Financial Markets, Currencies and Gold / Interest-Rates / Financial Markets
In this article, we discuss what rising interest rates will do to world financial markets, currencies, commodities, and gold.
Leveraged markets do not like rising interest rates
With rising interest rates, financial markets are in the beginning of a major trend change. I like to call it a major sea change. For the last 5 years (further back actually considering Japan) world interest rates have been way below historical averages. During this time, unprecedented leverage has found its way into asset and financial markets such as stocks.
Historical average interest rates run about 6%, going centuries back.
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Monday, June 18, 2007
Super Heroes of Central Bank Policy / Interest-Rates / Global Financial System
"Is it a bird, is it a plane...or is it a central banker wearing his underpants over his trousers...?"
JUST HOW POWERFUL are the world's central bankers? As comic-book super heroes go, these mild-mannered scholars would no doubt confess that they look a bit weedy.
The massed talents of the Federal Reserve or Bank of England, for instance, hardly ever leap over tall buildings in a single bound. Ben Bernanke and Mervyn King don't own a flowing cape between them, not judging by the multi-year wait for long-dated bond yields to catch up with their gently rising overnight base rates.
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Saturday, June 16, 2007
Interest Rates and Global Growth / Interest-Rates / Inflation
If investors want to beat the market, they need to understand how global growth is affecting interest rates and inflation. Bill Gross of Pimco Bonds, the world's largest bond management firm, stated in his most recent investment outlook that “With the possibility of creeping inflationary tendencies, especially in weak currency countries including the U.S., combined with the potential reduction of financial flow subsidies which to this point have favored fixed income vs. equity and real commodity investments, we come to the following range forecasts for the secular timeframe from 2007 to 2011.”Read full article... Read full article...