More Small Things

On April 23, 2015, the US Treasury auctioned off $18 billion in inflation-indexed bonds maturing in April 2020. These 5-year TIPS stopped out at the lowest yield for that particular security class in almost a year before then. Coming as it did during the spring of 2015, it was met with the usual textbook applied commentary, where bond investors were supposedly pricing Janet Yellen’s “transitory” scenario. The oil and commodity crash of late 2014 was by convention nothing more than an aberration, and the auction results appeared to confirm as much.

The sharp bidding for inflation protection particularly without a similar move in the 5-year UST security (not TIPS) meant that inflation breakevens, a measure of market inflation expectations, jumped 10 bps after the auction. At 170 bps, the 5-year breakeven was about 65 bps off the low and at that moment more than half retracing the considerable pessimism that had been provoked by during the (initial) oil crash. Positivity was dominant again.

“The market likes TIPS,” said Edward Acton, a U.S. government-bond strategist in Stamford, Connecticut, for Royal Bank of Scotland’s RBS Securities unit, one of 22 primary dealers obligated to bid at U.S. auctions. “This disinflationary pressure has eased off, and we’re just waiting to see how strong and how quickly inflation pressures can surprise to the upside.”

That, of course, never happened. Inflation instead sunk much lower as did the global economy. Was it merely confirmation bias, that “everyone” simple saw what they wanted? The thing about auctions is that pricing is never strictly about fundamentals, in the case of TIPS meaning inflation expectations. Demand for TIPS (or any) OTR paper may be robust for reasons that have nothing to do with inflation or credit.

Almost exactly one year before, on April 17, 2014, the Treasury had auctioned, as it typically does, the previous year’s 5-year TIPS. The demand for that security (912828C99) was even further off the charts. The yield on the day before, admittedly in late stage OFR status, was -6 bps. The market was anticipating heavy demand, but the settled yield after the auction was -21.3 bps. That drop in TIPS yield coupled with a selloff in the 5-year UST left inflation breakevens for the 5-year maturity spiking higher by more than 22 bps in a single day.