Hoisington Investment Management – Quarterly Review and Outlook, Second Quarter 2013 By Lacy Hunt, PhD, and Van Hoisington
Hoisington Investment Management: Lower Long Term Rates
The secular low in bond yields has yet to be recorded. This assessment for a continuing pattern of lower yields in the quarters ahead is clearly a minority view, as the recent selling of all types of bond products attest. The rise in long term yields over the last several months was accelerated by the recent Federal Reserve announcement that it would be “tapering” its purchases of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities. This has convinced many bond market participants that the low in long rates is in the past. The Treasury bond market’s short term fluctuations are a function of many factors, but its primary and most fundamental determinate is attitudes toward current and future inflation. From that perspective, the outlook for long term Treasury yields to fall is most favorable in light of: a) diminished inflation pressures; b) slowing GDP growth; c) weakening consumer fundamentals; and d) anti-growth monetary and fiscal policies.
Hoisington Investment Management: Inflation
Sustained higher inflation is, and has always been, a prerequisite for sustained increases in long term interest rates. Inflation’s role in determining the level of long term rates was quantified by Irving Fisher 83 years ago (Theory of Interest, 1930) with the Fisher equation. It states that long term rates are the sum of inflation expectations and the real rate. This proposition has been reconfirmed in numerous sophisticated statistical studies and can also be empirically observed by comparing the Treasury bond yield to the inflation rate (Chart 1). On an annual basis, the Treasury bond yield and the inflation rate have moved in the same direction in 80% of the years since 1954.
http://www.hoisingtonmgt.com/pdf/HIM2013Q2NP.pdf
