Reuters details:
U.S. Treasuries rose broadly and the five-year yield hit a record low on Wednesday, supported by prospects of further monetary easing by the U.S. Federal Reserve.
* The five-year Treasuries yield fell to a record low of 1.179 percent at one point.
* Treasuries have been supported by market expectations that the Fed could unveil a second round of quantitative easing as early as November and make new purchases of Treasuries.
* An additional factor supporting Treasuries was a rally in Japanese government bonds in the wake of the Bank of Japan's decision on Tuesday to ease monetary policy, said a trader for a European brokerage house.
Sean from Dead Cats Bouncing details the why:
The purpose of QE is to increase inflation expectations and support growth, so success would be reflected in the long-run real rate (a proxy for real trend GDP growth) to mean-revert back towards the 2-2.5% range as happened in 2009.He finishes with a sentence that sums this all up perfectly.
The inflation expectations component of yields will have to move higher if central banks start chucking hundreds of billions of new money around. In other words, even with the Fed as bond ‘buyer of last resort’, nominal yields are unsustainably low, particularly as commodity markets are on fire in anticipation.
What is remarkable is that the Fed is going nuclear when the US economy is by no means in freefall (as evidenced by yesterday’s ISM non-manufacturing survey).
We’re heading into uncharted waters and we’re traveling at full speed.Source: Federal Reserve
This seems kind of silly to me, rates as low as ever, yet refinancing is at an 8-week low. Granted we're trying and can't, but still... Are these investors forecasting 3% mortgage rates or something?!
ReplyDeleteBroc,
ReplyDeletetry 0% mortgages, or an interest free loan to pay your mortgage!
No Interest Loand Offered to Jobless Homeowners
http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2010/10/no-interest_loa.html
broc- there are plenty of markets where i (someone who can get credit) wouldn't buy with 0% loans based on valuation. at some point you have to pay back principal and if that discounted back at the nominal rate is still higher than the price of a home, a 0% loan won't get me to be a buyer.
ReplyDeletefor other markets that have normalized back to pre-bubble levels, the problem is people don't have credit and/or jobs. can't buy a home these days without both.