The Grand Finale

Let me run a story by you. The dollar is rising against both its EM and DM counterparts, and U.S. equities—predominantly growth and tech—are gunning higher. By contrast, EU equities are lukewarm, and EMs are outright struggling as balance-of-payment stress take down one domino after the other. In bonds, the U.S. front-end is held up by expectations that the Fed will keep trucking, while the belly and long end are edging sideways. In other words, the U.S. yield curve is, still, flattening. Finally, all measures of global macro-liquidity have rolled over; real M1 growth is falling, and CB balance sheet expansion is kicking into reverse. To boot, most other leading indices also are exhibiting weakness. If this doesn’t sound familiar, it means that you have been living under a rock this year. I have been recounting this story for several months, and I am getting tired of it. But we haven’t yet had the grand finale so it’s probably too early to abandon it, as much as I would like to. In summary, I think we are due a fall in U.S. bond yields, potentially in both the 2y and 10y but almost certainly in the latter. I reckon that this happens alongside, or right after, a final moonshot in the dollar. It should be a cathartic moment for markets, setting the stage for a different story.

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