Why all eyes are on the 10 years treasuries? Why not on the 2 years or the 30 years? This is because the US 10-year note is used generally as a benchmark to set as a borrowing cost for mortgage rate worldwide.
Many analysed that the 10 years treasuries yield has broken above the high at 3.03% set in 2013, and it is a psychological level. I believe it is not just that, but it has also broken the last 37 years of this downtrend.
Drawing trend-line can be subjective, some will take the recent high achieved this year as the new peak and continue to project this trend downwards. Therefore it is also important to track the historical data and to reference to the fundamental developments as well.
According to the chart above, it has clearly broken above this major downtrend and may start to trend higher.
Does this potential uptrend match-up with the fundamental?
Since after the global financial meltdown in 2008, many central banks have joined-in to support the economy in adopting a looser monetary policy. With more currencies being created since 2008, things that we eat and buy do get a little more expensive today - globally. What was a cup of coffee you have paid in 2008 compare to today? The house that you are staying in, how much was it value at in 2008 compare to today's valuation.
Keep tab especially on the strength of your home currencies. If your currency is weakening, what does it means? It means you will have pay more for the same goods compare to what you paid last year; it will now cost more to import. If your home currency weakens further, the more you will have to pay, that's another reason causing the inflation.
In a normal market cycle, we will have a normal yield curve. This is where economy may get overheated, causing some inflation, therefore the central bank increases it's interest rate to curb inflation. To reason that Fed raises interest rate is because of overheating of economy, we can choose to be more holistic on this viewpoint.
The dollar index since beginning of 2017, it has depreciated 15%. One of the key reason for Fed to raise rates is inflation caused by the weakening of the US dollar, and not just about overheating of the economy. I will continue to monitor the direction of the US dollar, as long as it remains weak and started to trend lower again, there will be a very good chance for the yield to continue to rise further.
Therefore, home and business owners who engaged in higher gearing model, it is time to re-think your strategizes.
Following was an interview with a radio station. I spoke about the flattening of yield curve. Take time to study and compare the following two images, one was in 2008 and the other is the current.
Ryan asked what investors should be focusing on?
Investors should not be too distracted on any intermittent new news or crisis, but continue to know what to focus on, on the "what is it?", which we have just discussed, that is to monitor the direction of the treasury yield. Now many market watchers are now showing their concerns about the flattening yield curve. I have uploaded the past four years of the yield curve on our website, you could see how much it has been shaped from a normal yield curve 4 years ago to a much flattening yield curve today. If the yield curve flatten too much and became inverted, it is not too much of a good news.
The first image, credit to Yahoo Finance.