Source: RBA As the above chart shows, the yield curve has dropped 70 to 90bps for all terms since March 19. With a 3 year bond yield just above 2.80%, which is close to where it was during the worst of the GFC, its pretty obvious markets aren’t too confident in the strength of our …
Category Archive: Economy
May 07
Australia’s Dumb Budget
I don’t have a great deal to say other than I thought I’d take this opportunity to point out, again, that with Australia’s multi-speed economy there is absolutely no logic in having a budget surplus. The budget surplus has become a political football that is not based on logic but is based on some ridiculous …
Apr 30
Australian Government Bond Yield Curve…new lows
Source: RBA I know its just a week and a half since I last provided an Australian Government Bond Yield curve update but over this time the curve has dropped another 20-25bps to mostly be below the bottom from 19th December. This is largely on the back of weak inflation data…deflation if you look at the seasonally …
Apr 19
Australian Government Bond Yields…heading south again
Source: RBA The above chart shows that bond yields shows that after bond yields reached a high around 1 month ago they have declined across all terms by around 50bps. That means that most of the traditional bond funds would have produced capital gains of around 2% over that last month (because the duration od …
Apr 08
Bad economic data is underway
Source: www.zerohedge.com Earlier in the week Zero Hedge showed the above chart and unfortunately there maybe something to it as it appears the outlook may be deteriorating. Whilst policymakers haven’t started to dither in obvious ways at the moment, with the Spanish government announcing increased austerity measures which will only make their economy worse, there …
Apr 02
Australian Government Bond Yields…a rate cut suggestion?
Source: RBA In less than two weeks the yield curve managed to drop around 15bps back to levels similar to those of late January. This is despite slightly stronger equity markets, the ASX200 made it through the 4,300 barrier for the first time in many months, and not that much in the way of really bad news…I …
Mar 20
Australian Government Bond Yields…approaching normal
Well…not normal yet. The shorter part of the curve suggests the market is expecting another two 25bps cuts by the RBA but with the Euro sovereign crisis well and truly looking much better its highly unlikely there’ll be any cuts soon. Whilst there’s plenty of evidence that shows the Euro sovereign crisis has improved, nothing …
Mar 06
Australian Bond Yields…still edging up
Source: RBA I know the above chart is a couple of days old but there’s not much change since last Thursday. At its simplest what it shows is that the bond market is still expecting the Reserve Bank to decrease interest rates some time during the year…with 1 year bond yields at less than 4%, …
Feb 09
Australian Government Bond Yields…still creeping up
When I saw the headline in the Market section of today’s Australian Financial Review I thought bond yields must have gone through the roof but the above chart shows that there ‘s only a relatively small increase compared to a couple of weeks ago. Markets had obviously priced in a rate decrease from the Reserve …
Feb 07
A little bit of Bond misinformation
I was just reading the latest riveting story on bonds in this month’s Asset magazine and I feel compelled to share an example of misinformation that tends to annoy me a little (I know its probably a little pathetic but anyway)…John O’Brien, van Eyk – Head of Research, apparently said that many of the great …