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Market Insights:
January 2, 2024
Posted on January 02, 2024
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Tuesday Takeaway
Posted on October 09, 2014
The Markets During the third quarter of 2014, U.S. investors remained as optimistic as the narrator in Langston Hughes’ poem, Life Is Fine. All major U.S. indices pushed higher during the quarter despite mixed economic signals, monetary policy concerns, and geopolitical tensions. U.S. Treasury bond markets continued to confound investors and analysts during the quarter. Rates have remained low even with the end of quantitative easing in sight and the Federal Reserve preparing for the next step in unwinding monetary policy which is raising the Fed Fund’s rate. Although the timing of the rate increase remains uncertain, in theory, bond rates should be moving higher in anticipation of the change. A Bloomberg survey found economists anticipate 10-year Treasury yields will reach 2.78 percent by the end of 2014. They began the year at 2.98 percent and finished last week at 2.45 percent. Bond yields have remained low, in part, because of geopolitical conflicts. Relations between Ukraine, Russia, and the West deteriorated further when an international commercial airliner carrying hundreds of passengers was shot down over Ukraine by a surface-to-air missile. Sanctions imposed by the European Union (EU) and United States have negatively affected the Russian economy. BBC.com reported about $75 billion in capital has fled Russia and the country’s economy appears to be on the brink of recession. Sanctions also hurt economic growth in the EU where recovery has been as precarious as a newborn foal trying to stand. World stock markets were disappointed, late in the quarter, when the European Central Bank confirmed it was ready to pursue further stimulus but failed to offer any specifics. Over the quarter, interest rates in Europe drifted lower. The Wall Street Journal reported, “Record-low interest rates in Europe have flipped bond investing on its head. Some bond buyers, typically paid for lending out their money, have begun paying borrowers to look after their cash.” Renewable energy issues aggravated problems in Germany. “On June 16… the wholesale price of electricity fell to minus €100 per megawatt hour (MWh). That is, generating companies were having to pay the managers of the grid to take their electricity,” reported The Economist. The problem was less predictable forms of energy, like solar and wind, create challenges for utilities accustomed to power plants that run constantly and produce a predictable amount of energy. Throughout the quarter, geopolitical issues increased at a rate that might rival Fibonacci’s hypothetical rabbit population (okay, maybe not quite that fast):