Hostilities abroad, political dysfunction at home. For the stock market, all of that takes a back seat to interest rates.
Just don’t blame the Federal Reserve for long-term Treasury yields jumping 30 basis points, or 0.3 percentage point, on the week. Neither expected future inflation nor the prospect of a further increase in the central bank’s federal-funds rate target atop the 5.25% of hikes put in place in the past 1½ years are responsible for that benchmark reaching that round number on Thursday afternoon.
Going back to first principles, longer-term interest rates equal the sum of short-term rates over successive periods, plus a so-called term premium for holding a longer-duration instrument. About two-thirds of the 1.2-percentage-point rise in the 10-year yield in the past three months can be explained by the decrease in the anticipated 2024 rate cuts that had been priced into the fed-funds futures market, which in turn reflects the further deferral of the long-predicted recession.
This wealth inflation, which can be traced to the most massive aggregate fiscal and monetary stimulus ever seen, could reverse as policies are tightened, Carson adds. But for now, this wealth—concentrated in the hands of the well-to-do, who disproportionately drive overall spending—has defied Fed tightening. Indeed, the wealthiest cohort probably has reaped a windfall from 5% returns on T-bills and money markets from their liquid balances that used to earn virtually nothing.
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