Some news was objectively bad for inflation trades: delta variant, Fed, China slowdown ... but not enough to justify this massacre.
Let's dig deeper 👇👇 (1/6)
POSTIONING
Always a weak argument (there is a buyer for every seller), but reflation had become the consensus by June and spec traders were abnormally short bonds.
This anomaly has been mostly corrected (2/6)
TARGET-DATE FUND REBALANCING
Funny how the 10-year yield peaked on March 31, the last day of Q1! 🤔🤔
Stocks outperformed bonds by 45% between June 2020 and June 2021. Target-date funds had to buy a lot of bonds to get back to their target allocations
(3/6)
EUR & JPY FLOW INTO TREASURIES:
On March 31, .S. 10Y UST paid 2% more than German bunds and 1.6% more than JGBs.
Hedging costs collapsed at the same time. A hedged position in 10 Y U.S. Treasuries yielded 1.3% in Japan and 93 bp in Germany (4/6)
PSYCHOLOGY
Reflation would destroy the bedrock of the past 40 years: the negative relation between stocks and bonds, the Fed put, rising multiples, and 10% returns for 60/40 portfolios. Investors prefer to believe central bankers, rather than “their own lying eyes”.
(5/6)
THIS TOO SHALL PASS
Citi inflation surprise index still soaring.
Reflation sectors are still crazy cheap, especially as their earnings will soar next year
The Fed's preferred inflation measure, core PCE, rose at an annualized 5.1% last month, its highest growth in a year
Just a month ago, the futures market priced SEVEN cuts in 2024! And yet, the rebound of inflation was predictable
Extracts from my report "Life Finds a Way" 👇
In the deflationist view, inflation is the CPI, and what gets measured is what matters.
In the narrow world of the owners’ equivalent rent, the retained earnings method, and hedonic adjustments, inflation was a one-time accident caused by COVID and supply chain disruptions.
For example, the fact that the BLS measures of shelter costs lag behind market-based measure by 10 to 20 % does not matter because few people bought homes in the past year and many leases have not been repriced