A bigger worry would be if U.S. inflation that’s been slow to retreat starts heading higher annually, said Jason England, global bond portfolio manager at Janus Henderson Investors.
“The worst-case scenario would be if inflation trends the other way,” England said, adding that isn’t his base-case scenario, but could risk triggering the Federal Reserve to resume jumbo rate increases. Rates jitters have resumed recently, including after last week’s blowout jobs report and still high inflation reading helped push the yield on the 2-year Treasury TMUBMUSD02Y , which is sensitive to the Fed’s policy rate, above 2.7% on Tuesday, the highest since 2007.
Markets realign with Fed Stocks on Tuesday booked their worst daily drop in more than two months, while continued pressure on Wednesday left the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA in the red for the year. “Not only does the fed-funds rate need to continue to rise, but once it’s reached the endgame, the plan is to stay at those restrictive levels for some time,” Hughey said.One risk is that today’s meatier bond yields would become less attractive if the central bank still can’t make substantial headway in getting inflation, pegged at 6.4% in January, down toward its 2% annual target.