Wall Street forecaster Jim Bianco expects 10-year Treasury yields to reach 5.5% this year (from CNBC)…

It’s a level not seen since George W. Bush was president. Wall Street forecaster Jim Bianco is predicting the benchmark 10-year Treasury note  yield will hit 5.5% this year — its highest level since May 2001. A major part of his thesis is built on the economy’s strength and resiliency. “I don’t think the economy

The recent bond market rally is overlooking a serious debt problem (from Bloomberg)…

Right around the start of November, two words suddenly disappeared from the chatter in the bond market: debt supply. As bond prices surged across the developed world day after day, sending yields tumbling and handing investors some much-needed profits, the angst about soaring budget deficits melted away. But for how long? Over the next several

Forecasters are strongly divided on the outlook for long-term rates (from The Daily Spark)…

Some forecasters are currently predicting that 10-year rates will end the year above 5%, others are predicting a level below 3%, and the chart below shows the standard deviation of the 12-month ahead forecast for 10-year Treasury yields for 26 private sector forecasters since 2019. The rising trend in the standard deviation of forecasts shows

Who buys $9 trillion of Treasuries this year? (from Grahams Benjamins)…

There are three numbers worth watching this year: $34 trillion, $1.7 trillion, and $1 trillion. This time last year, US government debt was below $31 trillion. This means that in 2023 alone, debt grew by more than $3 trillion, or 10%. Since the outbreak of COVID, the chart of US debt growth has been parabolic:

U.S. companies have been piling into convertible debt to hold down interest costs (from The Financial Times)…

US companies have been piling into the market for convertible bonds as they search for ways to keep their interest costs down, in a rare flurry of activity in otherwise subdued corporate fundraising markets. Issuance of convertible debt climbed by 77 per cent last year to $48bn, according to data from LSEG, making it one

Private credit is having a “golden moment” – here’s what investors should know (from VettaFi Advisor Perspectives)…

According to Jonathan Gray, the president of Blackstone, this is a “golden moment” for the private credit asset class. After quoting Gray, the Financial Times’ Robin Wigglesworth noted that “BlackRock’s alternatives investment supremo, Edwin Conway, is ‘confident about (its) future’.1 Apollo’s Marc Rowan sees ‘a good time for the private credit product set’.” Scarcely concealing