Mar 26, 2021 | Global Economy, Monetary Policy
Central banks are adding more ambiguity back into their reaction functions. This points to higher global rate volatility After years of repression, rate volatility is beginning to rise. This is not only a reflection of greater macro-economic volatility, but –...
Feb 27, 2020 | Monetary Policy
Historically, investors have required extra yield to hold longer-term bonds instead of short-term securities to compensate them for the added uncertainty. Thus, in a “normal” world, term premium (TP) should not be persistently negative. Yet, since 2016, TP has been...
Nov 1, 2019 | Monetary Policy
This post was taken from our weekly report, dated October 15, 2019. In the last month yields have since then done a round trip, falling and then rising again, but crucially term premium (TP) has not fallen. It was TP’s relentless fall through 2019 that meant the...
Oct 18, 2019 | Monetary Policy
The divergence in monetary policy across developed markets since the beginning of 2018 is starting to breakdown as Fed and ECB easing makes it increasingly difficult for the hawkish hold-outs to tighten. Above-target inflation in 2018/early 2019 provided cover for the...
Aug 29, 2019 | Monetary Policy
The RBNZ surprised markets by cutting the official cash rate by a greater than expected 50bps, front-running further expected easing from the FOMC, and RBA. Governor Adrian Orr commented that negative rates are “within the realms of possibility”. Despite this clear...
Dec 14, 2018 | European Economy, Monetary Policy
Market-based measures of euro area inflation expectations have shifted lower, which could point to a delay in monetary policy normalisation. The first chart below shows the EUR 5Y5Y forward inflation swap, which has dropped sharply in recent weeks. A few years ago,...
Jan 26, 2018 | Monetary Policy
Central banks are increasingly altering the perception of their reaction functions to allow tighter (or less easy) monetary policy. At the ECB, discussion of so-called “supercore” inflation has re-emerged. This consists of the components of the HICP basket that have a...
May 20, 2016 | European Economy, Monetary Policy
An ongoing theme we kept coming back to throughout 2015 in the eurozone is that monetary policy tends to either too hot or too cold for the core or periphery. The ECB’s attempts to fight deflation and reflate the periphery have fuelled increases in German mortgages...
Mar 11, 2016 | Monetary Policy
Financial conditions are slowly but surely tightening. We have had one actual rate hike by the Fed, but conditions had begun to tighten before this. This is primarily a developed market phenomenon. Real M1 for the G7 has been trending down for the past 6 months....