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Bond bubble, American-style
By Jack Crooks
The past seldom obliges by revealing to us when wildness will break out in the
future. Wars, depressions, stock-market booms and crashes, and ethnic massacres
come and go, but they always seem to arrive as surprises. After the fact,
however, when we study the history of what happened, the source of the wildness
appears to be so obvious to us that we have a hard time understanding how
people on the scene were oblivious to what lay wait for them. - Peter Bernstein,
Against the Gods
We believe a nasty popping of the bond-market bubble lies in wait for
investors. Why? In short, yields are too low, bond prices too high, and quality
spreads too tight. The gargantuan rally, which actually peaked in June 2003, as
evidenced in the monthly chart of 30-year bond futures below, should soon be
history.
 The
primary source of the "wildness" seems easy to pinpoint ahead of time - this
time. It's the US Federal Reserve. It was the engineering of the emergency Fed
Funds rate, to save the world from the clutches of deflation (denying this as
the proper cleansing agent for economic sins past) that proved most impressive
as bubble fuel. It's now the long march toward the elusive "normalization" of
benchmark interest rates that will draw Zeppelin-like comparisons from
observers as long-bond prices head toward earth.
We wouldn't be surprised to see a surprise in the form of inflation scare,
major hedge-fund collapse, or foreign bank reserve reallocation to hasten the
descent of fixed income prices across the entire spectrum: from Treasury to
junk. Those holding junk bonds, now the darling of yield chasers, will soon
understand the moniker.
Here are a few tidbits of anecdotal evidence for your perusal:
Net purchases of all US fixed-income securities rose to a record high in
October on a rolling 12-month basis.
Custody holdings of US debt hit a new high of US$1.329 trillion.
Foreign purchases of US corporate bonds hit a record high on a rolling 12-month
basis.
Foreign purchases of US Agency paper hit a record high on a rolling 12-month
basis.
US high-yield, or junk, bond issuance has reached record levels; issuance to
date totaled $139.8 billion, beating $136 billion in the previous year and just
edging ahead of 1998's $137.8 billion.
Interest-rate derivatives held by US commercial banks increased to a record $73
trillion (notional value) in the third quarter of 2004.
The credit spreads on double- B-rated securities are tighter than they were on
the eve of the Long Term Capital Management debacle.
Strong investor demand for the debt has pushed the premium over Treasuries to
historically low levels.
Sources: Thomson Financial, OCC Report, Financial Times, Weldon Money Monitor,
Grant's
This historic level of love for bonds did give bonds a boost recently. But bond
futures didn't reach the highs made in early  2004
and are well below record highs made in June 2003. Prices have stalled and are
turning over. It appears as a classic technical pattern of a failed high,
leading to a series of lower highs that will lead to a series of lower lows.
The market now realizes the Fed is serious about hiking the Fed Funds rate.
That, we believe, is why the price action is turning negative.
There is a good chance that Fed Funds may rise more quickly than now believed.
If the thinking at the Fed is anywhere close to that of Morgan Stanley
economist Ted Wieseman, the rush out of bonds may morph to a stampede. "In an
economy growing at a sustained 4%+ real rate, experiencing near-record low
national savings, a corresponding record high current account gap and rising
inflation, bubble seems the only reasonable way to describe real short rates of
barely over 0%, real five-year rates of less than 1%, real 10-year rates of
1.6%, and real 20-year rates of less than 2%, probably 200 to 300 bp [basis
points] below sustainable fair-value levels depending on maturity," writes
Wieseman.
Many economists believe a hike in interest rates will improve the dismal US
savings picture. "The net national savings rate has averaged 1.7% through the
first three quarters of 2004, just above the record low of 1.2% hit in 2002,"
according to Wieseman. The structural dearth in savings rates adds to the US
dependence on international investors for funding of the gaping twin deficits -
the double-Ds of doom, so to speak. Thus higher rates will play a role in
healing US and global "imbalances". This is the weighty justification the Fed
will use for political cover.
The Fed's "policy mistake" was its decision to run the printing press 24/7 in
order save the US economy from what it perceived as a Japan-style deflation. It
was a conscious decision by the Fed to create asset bubbles rather than face
the painfully healing music of recession. These asset bubbles and artificially
lower interest rates have distorted consumer preferences. Instead of relying on
genuine old-fashioned income growth to fund consumption, consumers have
leveraged wealth off the stock and real-estate bubbles. And precisely because
the yield on cash was at historic lows, both professional and
not-so-professional investors quickly realized the advantages of borrowing
short and lending long.
In other words, the Fed has engineered the largest one-way bet in history. The
bet: long rates will stay low as far as the eye can see. Risk and uncertainty
don't enter into the equation when there's such "easy" money to be made. What
seems to be coming into focus is our "understanding how people on the scene"
are "oblivious to what lay wait for them".
Jack Crooks has traded in global equity, fixed income, commodity, and
currency markets for more than 20 years. He is president of Black Swan Capital,
a currency and commodities market advisory firm -
BlackSwanTrading.com. Black Swan offers a subscription-based
currency advisory service for forex and futures traders.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
for information on
sales, syndication and
republishing.)
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