In his latest weekend note, One River CIO Eric Peters discussed, among other topics, what he thought would be the nightmare scenario if not for the current, then certainly next Fed chairman: a world in which despite the Fed’s best intentions (and we use the term loosely), the Fed continued to hike rates without any perceptible increase in wages and thus, long-term inflation expectations. The result would be a failure to raise bond yields, which would provide further ammo for stocks to keep rising ever higher into what even the Fed tacitly admits is increasingly an asset bubble. This is how Peters described the ominous dynamic that would lead to major headaches for the next (and perhaps current, if Yellen remains in her spot) dynamic:
“Global profits are rising, unemployment is falling, growth is up” said the strategist. “Yet bond yields seem unable to jump.” US 10yr bond yields are 2.27%, Germany 0.40%, Japan 0.05%. “The cyclical surprise is that the Phillips curve finally kicks in, just as everyone gives in.” US unemployment is 4.2%, a 17yr low. Germany 3.6%, a 37yr low. Japan 2.8%, a 23yr low. “And the biggest structural surprise is that technology has rendered wage inflation a phenomenon for the history books.” “But if we don’t see a sustained cyclical jump in wages, then yields won’t go up. And if yields don’t go up, then the asset price ascent will accelerate,” continued the strategist. “Which will lead us into a 2018 that looks like what we had expected out of 2017; a war against inequality, a battle for Main Street at the expense of Wall Street, an Occupy Silicon Valley movement.” He paused, flipping through his calendar.”Then you’ll have this nightmare for the next Federal Reserve chief, because they’ll have to pop a bubble.”
Yesterday, picking up on this divergence between rising short-term rates, and an inability – and unwillingness – of the long-end to reprice higher which continues to manifest itself in a flattening of the yield curve, where the 2s10s pancaked to the lowest since the financial crisis…
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