In a striking interview with Goldman’s Allison Nathan, legendary trader Paul Tudor Jones argues that US inflation is set to accelerate sharply, making bonds a very poor investment, and that the Fed must act swiftly to tackle financial bubbles created by prolonged monetary easing.
Joining such luminaries as Bill Gross and Ray Dalio, who have both claimed the bull market in bonds is over, PTJ joins the choir and warns that “markets disciplined Greece for its budget transgressions; it’s just a matter of time before they discipline us” and as a result he sees the 10-year yields rising to 3.75 percent by year-end as a “conservative” target amid the now traditional and widely discussed bogeymen: supply outweighing demand, economic momentum outpacing the monetary policy response, and “glaring” bond valuations. Oh, and central banks ending the party, of course:
Beginning next September, when the ECB concludes its asset purchases, the aggregate balance sheet of the main central banks will start contracting after nearly a decade of expansion. That will be a major data break, making it a horrible time to own bonds.
PTJ also pours cold water on the repeated suggestion that higher yields will lead to more buying from pension funds: “Bond pension buying, for example, is very pro-cyclical. When stock prices rise, pensions reallocate their capital gains from stocks into bonds. As we’ve seen, this depresses the term premium and fuels more gains in the stock market. If and when the Fed raises rates enough to stop and reverse the stock market rise, that virtuous circle predicated on increasing capital gains will reverse, and bonds and stocks will decline together like they did in the 1970s.”
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