negusneg

New Member
Apro una nuova discussione su un tema che riguarda un po' tutti i temi di discussione che ci interessano, senza tuttavia poter essere confinato in uno specifico settore.

Veniamo da un trentennio di (quasi) ininterrotto ribasso dei tassi di interessi e questo, come è noto, è uno scenario estremamente favorevole per chi investe in obbligazioni e titoli di stato.

Si partiva, all'inizio degli anni '80, da un livello storicamente altissimo di inflazione (era il culmine della crisi petrolifera iniziata nel 1973) per arrivare, ai giorni nostri, a dei livelli così bassi che non si vedevano dagli anni '60.

Le implicazioni di questo trend secolare sono state molto forti per chi ha investito in reddito fisso, generando ritorni che quasi sicuramente saranno irripetibili nei prossimi anni, specularmente al contrario di quanto accadde negli anni 60-70, che bruciarono una enorme quantità di risparmi (allora le obbligazioni a tasso variabile o di breve termine dovevano essere ancora inventate :D, come i Bot, che vennero introdotti a metà degli anni '70, o comunque erano pochissimo diffuse) per effetto di una violenta e persistente fiammata inflazionistica.

Il grafico del tasso decennale americano, che riporto qui sotto, rende bene l'idea di quanto è successo.

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Molti di voi, probabilmente, hanno sempre operato in un contesto di tassi calanti, approfittando di quello che è stato definito The Great Bond Bull Market. Pochi probabilmente :nonno:hanno anche solo sentito parlare del bagno di sangue che dovette subire chi aveva investito in cartelle fondiarie, una delle forme di investimento a reddito fisso più diffuse tra i risparmiatori negli anni del boom economico degli anni '60.

Mentre fino a qualche tempo fa andava molto di moda delineare scenari giapponesi e la deflazione sembrava lo scenario principale (si sa che gli analisti à la page adorano sposare le tesi più estreme ed insolite :rolleyes:) i commentatori più attenti da tempo mettono in guardia che la festa potrebbe essere finita e che molto probabilmente il Grande Mercato Toro delle Obbligazioni è già finito.

Date le molteplici implicazioni di tipo strategico che questo possibile scenario comporta per ciascuno di noi, che si investa in titoli di stato o corporate, da cassettisti o da trader, in obbligazioni, materie prime o azioni, credo che faremmo bene ad approfondire la questione, che coinvolge un grande numero di aspetti macro e microeconomici.

Ne elenco alcuni sommariamente, per aprire il confronto, poi cercherò di postare alcuni contributi significativi, ma soprattutto spero che la discussione interessi abbastanza da creare una discussione che ci aiuti a delineare meglio i possibili futuri scenari.

- la ripresa in atto si consoliderà in futuro? o rimarrà comunque fragile e dipendente dal sostegno pubblico? e il double dip, che fine ha fatto?

- fino a quando l'enorme liquidità immessa in circolazione verrà assorbita senza causare bolle speculative o un ritorno di fiamma dell'inflazione?

- le banche centrali riusciranno a mettere in atto tempestivamente una exit strategy che consenta di mantenere l'inflazione sotto controllo? quando inizieranno ad aumentare i tassi di riferimento, quelle che non hanno GIA' cominciato?

- gli acquisti sul mercato di titoli (il cosiddetto quantitative easing) riusciranno a tenere compressi verso il basso i rendimenti o prima o poi l'enorme emissione di nuova carta, dovuta all'esplosione dei debiti pubblici, creerà delle crescenti tensioni sui tassi?

- se il decennio passato è stato nettamente favorevole all'investimento in reddito fisso, rispetto a chi ha investito in borsa, cosa ci si può aspettare nei prossimi dieci anni? che sia il momento di privilegiare le azioni?

- lo spread di rendimento delle obbligazioni corporate, high yield, subordinate e perpetue è ancora sufficiente da creare comunque un cuscinetto di sicurezza anche in caso di tassi crescenti?

- e i paesi emergenti? continueranno, come molti, forse troppi, sostengono, ad offrire una buona opportunità, considerato il fatto che gran parte di quei paesi ha un debito estremamente ridotto rispetto ai paesi industrializzati, una notevole crescita economica ed un avanzo commerciale che lascia supporre che le loro valute possano continuare a rafforzarsi? o anche lì, forse più che da noi, l'inflazione rischia di guastare la festa?

- se fare trading in obbligazioni è come rotolare una grande palla di neve, ora che siamo arrivati in fondo alla valle come facciamo a ripartire in salita, verso la cima della collina?

- quali investimenti possono rivelarsi maggiormente difensivi in questa fase? titoli di stato indicizzati all'inflazione? obbligazioni a tasso variabile? corporate ad alto spread? materie prime? valute? mattoni? conti deposito?
 

negusneg

New Member
Barron's - Up and Down Wall Street



SATURDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2010

HERE WE ARE on the eve of an election on which precariously hangs the fate of the nation, if not the universe. We know that because both the contending parties tell us so. We have to own up, though, to some small kernel of doubt, since lo! the many elections we've been witness to over the years were invariably also described as being crucial for the fate of the nation, if not the universe.
But as someone who staunchly believes in Winston Churchill's conclusion that democracy is the worst political system devised by man except for all the others, the history of this nation compels us to diffidently suggest that truly "crucial" elections have been rare as hen's teeth and the country has survived even the numerous times the populace perversely has chosen to throw rascals in instead of out.
Still, this election, whatever the outcome, does boast a significant distinction from all its midterm predecessors. Not, unfortunately, in the quality of the candidates; they're easily as mediocre or worse a crop as any produced in the past couple of hundred years. But where they truly stand out is in the enormous sums raised on behalf of their candidacies. As Will Rogers put it so aptly, "politics have gotten so expensive that it takes lots of money even to get beat."
According to the Center for Responsive Politics (that name seems like a contradiction in terms), which has been keeping track of this sort of thing for over a quarter of a century, when the dust settles and the final tally is in, something close to $4 billion will have been spent, a billion more than in 2006, the previous high for a midterm contest. Now, we realize that with Uncle Sam routinely running trillion-dollar-plus deficits, $4 billion can seem like chump change. But it strikes us as quite a bundle just to decide which chumps get the privilege of messing things up for the next two years.
As Bill Gross, boss man at Pimco, one smart guy, a treasured Roundtable member, who, after three fruitful decades in the investment trenches, knows everything worth knowing about fixed-income securities in particular and the perils and rewards of markets over all, grouses in his latest commentary: "Democrat or Republican, Elephant or Donkey, nothing much ever seems to change." Either party, he allows, has no trouble fecklessly adding hundreds of billions of bucks to the national debt.
Bill's normally the soul of equanimity, but what's got his dander up is the fearsome bind our improvident politicos have put us in. That particular bind, in his view, comes in the form of a "liquidity trap," in which neither rock-bottom interest rates nor even trillions of quantitative easing may stimulate borrowing or lending because of the conspicuous absence of consumer demand.
That Ben Bernanke can, either by writing checks—Bill's description of monetary easing, good old QE—or similar monetary exertions, get us out of the trap, stacks up as a long way from being a sure thing. And the likely launching of QE2 on Wednesday obviously exacerbates his concerns and endows them with urgency.
"Check writing in the trillions is not a bondholder's friend," he declares; "it is, in fact, inflationary and, if truth be told, somewhat of a Ponzi scheme." It may provide a temporary lift by raising bond prices but, ultimately, it "reaches a dead end where those prices no longer go up" and the investor is prey to inflation and negative real interest rates.
Say goodbye, then, to the great 30-year bull market in bonds. In the event, stockholders also face a dismal fate, though their ability to adjust somewhat to rising inflation could provide a bit of a cushion. And managers of both bond and equity portfolios will have to cope with a very different and not exactly salubrious environment.
Bill vows he has no intention sitting around and howling at the moon. Instead, he's putting his expertise, ground in 35 years of experience, to good purpose. More specifically, he plans to pursue what he calls "safe-spreads": investing in developing/emerging debt with higher yields and non-dollar denominations; high-quality corporate bonds and even U.S. agency mortgages yielding 200 basis more than Treasuries.
The kind of approach may not yield the outsize returns that bond and stock investors have grown accustomed to. But it promises to enable him—and his investors—to sleep soundly at night, with all the benign implications that holds for the nurturing and care of their nest eggs.

AS WE'VE TRIED TO STRESS, Bill Gross is not akin to one of those hyperventilating, wild-eyed bloggers who in an earlier incarnation before the advent of the Internet indulged their mordant view of Homo sapiens by walking around with sandwich signs proclaiming the end of the world is near, and now send out daily bulletins prophesying that something even worse—the end of the stock market—is near.
There is a tendency, we can attest, for even folks with decent haircuts and clean fingernails to label anyone expressing an occasional skeptical sentiment about the investment outlook as an irredeemable misanthrope or, at the very least, a chronic spoilsport. No doubt Bill, who calls them as he sees them, has had to field a few such accusations and, for that matter, hard as it may be to believe, given our perennially sunny perspective, so have we.
This is our way of backing into a less than upbeat analysis of the gross-domestic-product report for the third quarter, released on Friday. On the surface, the economy's performance was unexciting, but about in line with what the Street expected. Beneath the surface, it was even more unexciting.
There were, to be sure, a few more signs of life among consumers, who upped their spending by 2.6%, compared with 2.2% in the previous quarter, but not nearly enough to goose the economy sufficiently to make a dent in that stubbornly high unemployment rate. Capital investment continued to rise, but at a more subdued pace.
As the estimable Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research observes, the big boost to July-September GDP came from a $115.9 billion rise in inventories, the largest increase in inventories since the $117.2 billion gain in the first quarter of 1998. Alas, as Dean also points out, the improvement in final demand, which has averaged a pallid 1% in the five quarters since the official end of the recession, was a skimpy 0.6% in the latest three months.
All of which means the great inventory build is odds-on to lose momentum (if you'll pardon the expression) in the months ahead. As Dean observes "this report suggests a picture of an economy that may be skirting zero growth in the next two quarters."
Even if, as we believe, the economy will muddle through, it'll be at a pace that will hardly satisfy Wall Street's expectations as evidenced in the market's increasing frothiness. At the risk of being endlessly repetitive, not to say unrelentingly pessimistic, we don't quite grasp how the market is supposed to go racing merrily higher in the face of a limp recovery, with the consumer still weighed down by debt and still scared silly of losing his house and/or his job.

INTIMATIONS OF INVESTOR EUPHORIA that prompted the allusion to market frothiness are scrawled all over the latest sentiment readings. They may not yet have reached those giddy heights that are a clear sign we're headed for trouble, but they're plain enough to warrant a bit of a shiver. The latest Investors Intelligence sounding of advisory sentiment showed a heavy preponderance of bulls—45.6%, to be precise—compared with a scant 20% of bears. The remaining 30% were on the fence but tend to be leaning to the bullish side.
Typically, the more optimistic these pros are, the more likely the market's headed for a fall, while the more bearish their outlook, the more likely the market's due to rise. They are, in short, consummate contrarian indicators.
The same pretty much holds true for the small investor. And the collective sentiment of this group, which tends in any case to be quite mercurial, at the moment is even more perturbing. According to the American Association of Individual Investors, which routinely polls its members on how they feel about the market, 51.2% of them are bullish and a mere 21.6% bearish. The rest are listed as "neutral" (whatever that means).
Sentiment flops around for the most part in line with market performance. And like every other device that purports to predict the future, it's scarcely fool-proof. But when it's so emphatically bullish or bearish as the latest numbers suggest, it's a good bet it's primed to move in the opposite direction.

THIS WEEK SHAPES UP AS A LULU. Besides the election on Tuesday, the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee gathers the day after to end the suspense on QE2 (and start planning, we'd guess, for QE3), and Friday brings the October jobs report.
For guidance on what that report might look like we turned to John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics. John, you remember, was right on the money with his forecast for the September numbers, so we figured we'd try catching lightning twice.
The consensus, he relates, is for 45,000 additions to payroll and the unemployment rate to remain at 9.6%. His prediction: a contraction in payrolls, a higher jobless rate and rises in the broader unemployment measures. If he's on the money, remember you read it here first. If, by chance, he isn't, be nice and don't remember.


E-mail: [email protected]
 

negusneg

New Member
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Mark Hulbert
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Nov. 29, 2010, 11:01 p.m. EST
Is the tide turning?

Commentary: 99-week streak of bond fund inflows has come to end


By Mark Hulbert, MarketWatch
CHAPEL HILL, NC (MarketWatch) — Is the Great Bond Bull Market finally coming to an end?
Countless commentators (myself included) in recent months have concluded that it has, though in retrospect we’ve at best been premature — if not outright wrong.
But there is the distinct possibility that this time may be different: The tide appears to be turning in the huge flow of funds into bond mutual funds and ETFs.
That fund inflow — better described as a tsunami — has been widely noted over the past couple of years, of course, during which investors exhibited an insatiable appetite for bond funds, consistently transferring more money into those funds than they withdrew.
In fact, according to TrimTabs Investment Research, a quantitative research firm, the sustained period of fund inflows into bond funds began nearly two years ago, in mid-December of 2008. The only other occasion in recent stock market history that even comes close to matching this, according to Vincent Deluard, Executive Vice President at Trim Tabs, is the sustained period of fund flows into stock mutual funds in the late 1990s leading up to the bursting of the Internet bubble.
That’s an ominous parallel, of course.

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But especially now, given that the string of weekly inflows into bond funds has finally been broken. That string, for those of you keeping score, was for 99 straight weeks.
It came to an end in the week ending Nov. 17. For that week, Trim Tabs estimates that $4.3 billion was pulled out of open-end bond funds in the U.S. Though the pace of this outflow did not continue in the week ending Nov. 24, it didn’t reverse itself either: Though TrimTabs estimates that there was a tiny inflow of $207 million into open-end bond bunds in that week, it was more than counterbalanced by a $592 million outflow from bond-oriented exchange-traded funds.
What makes the bond market particularly vulnerable to this nascent turning of the tide is that it wouldn’t take much to turn it into an avalanche just as big as the previous inflow. In an interview, Deluard pointed out that it’s been 26 years since the bond market suffered a “really severe correction. That means that the vast majority of investors in bond funds have never lived through a decline of that severity. This in turn means that, should a decline begin to gather steam, these inexperienced investors could easily panic and dump much of their bond fund holdings in very short order.”
That would cause the bond market to fall even faster, of course.
To be sure, a two-week outflow doesn’t in and of itself reverse 99 weeks of inflows. Nevertheless, given how precarious the situation is, what with huge inflows from inexperienced investors who could easily panic, it certainly appears as though the bond market is at a tipping point. If so, it won’t take much to precipitate a huge rout in the bond market.
“They don’t ring a bell at market tops,” goes the old Wall Street saw. Nevertheless, if indeed a major bond bear market has begun, the outflows over the last two weeks might eventually be seen in retrospect as very close to just such a bell.
 

negusneg

New Member
L'articolo originale di Bill Gross...

Investment Outlook
Bill Gross

November 2010

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Run Turkey, Run

They say a country gets the politicians it deserves or perhaps it deserves the politicians it gets. Whatever the order, America is next in line, and as we go to the polls in a few short days it’s incumbent upon a sleepy and befuddled electorate to at least ask ourselves, “What’s going on here?” Democrat or Republican, Elephant or Donkey, nothing much ever seems to change. Each party has shown it can add hundreds of billions of dollars to the national debt with little to show for it or move our military from one country to the next chasing phantoms instead of focusing on more serious problems back home. This isn’t a choice between chocolate and vanilla folks, it’s all rocky road: a few marshmallows to get you excited before the election, but with a lot of nuts to ruin the aftermath.

Each party’s campaign tactics remind me of airport terminals pre-9/11 when solicitors only yards apart would compete for the attention and dollars of travellers. “Save the Whales,” one would demand, while the other would pose as its evil twin – “Eat Whale Blubber,” the makeshift sign would read. It didn’t matter which slogan grabbed you, the end of the day’s results always produced a pot of money for them and the whales were neither saved nor eaten. American politics resemble an airline terminal with a huckster’s bowl waiting to be filled every two years.

And the paramount problem is not that we contribute so willingly or even so cluelessly, but that there are only two bowls to choose from. Thomas Friedman, the respected author of The World Is Flat, and a weekly New York Times Op-Ed author, recently suggested “ripping open this two-party duopoly and having it challenged by a serious third party” unencumbered by special interest megabucks. “We basically have two bankrupt parties, bankrupting the country,” was the explicit sentiment of his article, and I couldn’t agree more – whales or no whales. Was it relevant in 2004 that John Kerry was or was not an admirable “swift boat” commander? Will the absence of a mosque within several hundred yards of Ground Zero solve our deficit crisis? Is Christine O’Donnell really a witch? Did Meg Whitman employ an illegal maid? Who cares! We are being conned, folks; Democrats and Republicans alike. What have you really heard from either party that addresses America’s future instead of its prurient overnight fascination with scandal? Shame on them and of course, shame on us. We’re getting what we deserve. Vote NO in November – no to both parties. Vote NO to a two-party system that trades promises for dollars and hope for power, and leaves the American people high and dry.

There’s another important day next week and it rather coincidentally occurs on Wednesday – the day after Election Day – when either the Donkeys or the Elephants will be celebrating a return to power and the continuation of partisan bickering no matter who is in charge. Wednesday is the day when the Fed will announce a renewed commitment to Quantitative Easing – a polite form disguise for “writing cheques.” The market will be interested in the amount (perhaps as much as an initial $500 billion) as well as the targeted objective (perhaps a muddied version of “2% inflation or bust!”). The announcement, however, has been well telegraphed and the market’s reaction is likely to be subdued. More important will be the answer to the long-term question of “will it work?” and perhaps its associated twin “will it create a bond market bubble?”

Whatever the conclusion, not only investors, but the American people should recognise that Wednesday, even more than Tuesday, represents a critical inflection point in determining our future prosperity. Of course we’ve tried it before, most recently in the aftermath of the Lehman crisis, during which the Fed wrote $1.5 trillion or so in “cheques” to purchase Agency mortgages and a smattering of Treasuries. It might seem a tad dramatic then, to label QEII as “critical,” sort of like those airport hucksters, I suppose, that sold whale blubber for a living. But two years ago, there was the implicit assumption that the US and its associated G-7 economies needed just an espresso or perhaps an Adderall or two to get back to normal. Normal just hasn’t happened yet, and economic historians such as Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart have since alerted us that countries in the throes of delevering can take many, not several, years to return to a steady state.

The Fed’s second round of QE, therefore, more closely resembles an attempted hypodermic straight to the economy’s heart than its mood elevator counterpart of 2009. If QEII cannot reflate capital markets, if it can’t produce 2% inflation and an assumed reduction of unemployment rates back towards historical levels, then it will be a long, painful slog back to prosperity. Perhaps, as a vocal contingent suggests, our paper-based foundation of wealth deserves to be buried, making a fresh start from admittedly lower levels. The Fed, on Wednesday, however, will decide that it is better to keep the patient on life support with an adrenaline injection and a following morphine drip than to risk its demise and ultimate rebirth in another form.

We at PIMCO join with Ben Bernanke in this diagnosis, but we will tell you, as perhaps he cannot, that the outcome is by no means certain. We are, as even some Fed Governors now publically admit, in a “liquidity trap,” where interest rates or trillions in QEII asset purchases may not stimulate borrowing or lending because consumer demand is just not there. Escaping from a liquidity trap may be impossible, much like light trapped in a black hole. Just ask Japan. Ben Bernanke, however, will try – it is, to be honest, all he can do. He can’t raise or lower taxes, he can’t direct a fiscal thrust of infrastructure spending, he can’t change our educational system, he can’t force the Chinese to revalue their currency – it is all he can do, and as he proceeds, the dual questions of “will it work” and “will it create a bond market bubble” will be answered. We at PIMCO are not sure.

Still, while next Wednesday’s announcement will carry our qualified endorsement, I must admit it may be similar to a Turkey looking forward to a Thanksgiving Day celebration. Bondholders, while immediate beneficiaries, will likely eventually be delivered on a platter to more fortunate celebrants, be they financial asset classes more adaptable to inflation such as stocks or commodities, or perhaps the average American on Main Street who might benefit from a hoped-for rise in job growth or simply a boost in nominal wages, however deceptive the illusion. Cheque writing in the trillions is not a bondholder’s friend; it is in fact inflationary, and, if truth be told, somewhat of a Ponzi scheme. Public debt, actually, has always had a Ponzi-like characteristic. Granted, the US has, at times, paid down its national debt, but there was always the assumption that as long as creditors could be found to roll over existing loans – and buy new ones – the game could keep going forever. Sovereign countries have always implicitly acknowledged that the existing debt would never be paid off because they would “grow” their way out of the apparent predicament, allowing future’s prosperity to continually pay for today’s finance.

Now, however, with growth in doubt, it seems that the Fed has taken Charles Ponzi one step further. Instead of simply paying for maturing debt with receipts from financial sector creditors – banks, insurance companies, surplus reserve nations and investment managers, to name the most significant – the Fed has joined the party itself. Rather than orchestrating the game from on high, it has jumped into the pond with the other swimmers. One and one-half trillion in cheques were written in 2009, and trillions more lie ahead. The Fed, in effect, is telling the markets not to worry about our fiscal deficits, it will be the buyer of first and perhaps last resort. There is no need – as with Charles Ponzi – to find an increasing amount of future gullibles, they will just write the cheque themselves. I ask you: Has there ever been a Ponzi scheme so brazen? There has not. This one is so unique that it requires a new name. I call it a Sammy scheme, in honour of Uncle Sam and the politicians (as well as its citizens) who have brought us to this critical moment in time. It is not a Bernanke scheme, because this is his only alternative and he shares no responsibility for its origin. It is a Sammy scheme – you and I, and the politicians that we elect every two years – deserve all the blame.

Still, as I’ve indicated, a Sammy scheme is temporarily, but not ultimately, a bondholder’s friend. It raises bond prices to create the illusion of high annual returns, but ultimately it reaches a dead-end where those prices can no longer go up. Having arrived at its destination, the market then offers near 0% returns and a picking of the creditor’s pocket via inflation and negative real interest rates. A similar fate, by the way, awaits stockholders, although their ability to adjust somewhat to rising inflation prevents such a startling conclusion. Last month I outlined the case for low asset returns in almost all categories, in part due to the end of the 30-year bull market in interest rates, a trend accentuated by QEII in which 2- and 3-year Treasury yields approach the 0% bound. Anyone for 1.10% 5-year Treasuries? Well, the Fed will buy them, but then what, and how will PIMCO tell the 500 billion investor dollars in the Total Return strategy and our equally valued 750 billion dollars of other assets that the Thanksgiving Day axe has finally arrived?


We will tell them this. Certain Turkeys receive a Thanksgiving pardon or they just run faster than others! We intend PIMCO to be one of the chosen gobblers. We haven’t been around for 35+ years and not figured out a way to avoid the November axe. We are a survivor and our clients are not going to be Turkeys on a platter. You may not be strutting around the barnyard as briskly as you used to – those near 10% annualised yields in stocks and bonds are a thing of the past – but you’re gonna be around next year, and then the next, and the next. Interest rates may be rock bottom, but there are other ways – what we call “safe spread” ways –to beat the axe without taking a lot of risk: developing/emerging market debt with higher yields and non-dollar denominations is one way; high quality global corporate bonds are another. Even US Agency mortgages yielding 200 basis points more than those 1% Treasuries, qualify as “safe spreads.” While our “safe spread” terminology offers no guarantees, it is designed to let you sleep at night with less interest rate volatility. The Fed wants to buy, so come on, Ben Bernanke, show us your best and perhaps last moves on Wednesday next. You are doing what you have to do, and it may or may not work. But either way it will likely signify the end of a great 30-year bull market in bonds and the necessity for bond managers and, yes, equity managers to adjust to a new environment.

If a country gets the politicians it deserves, then the same can be said of an investor – you’re gonna get what you deserve. Vote No to Republican and Democratic turkeys on Tuesday and Yes to PIMCO on Wednesday. We hope to be your global investment authority for a new era of “SAFE spread” with lower interest rate duration and price risk, and still reasonably high potential returns. For us, and hopefully you, Turkey Day may have to be postponed indefinitely.


William H. Gross
Managing Director
 

thoor

Nuovo forumer
ciao Negus ..una volta di piu' i miei complimenti per gli stimoli che dai .....non riesco ad apportare contributi significativi alla disussione ..quindi seguiro' in silenzio ..ma tengo a farti sapere che ti stimo molto ...:up::up:
 

negusneg

New Member
... e il commento di Bloomberg

Fed Easing to Signify End of Bull Market, Gross Says

By Susanne Walker - Oct 27, 2010 5:54 PM GMT+0200

Bill Gross, manager of the world’s largest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., said a renewal of asset purchases by the Federal Reserve will likely signify the end of the 30-year bull market in bonds.
“Check writing in the trillions is not a bondholder’s friend,” Gross wrote in his monthly investment outlook posted on Newport Beach, California-based Pimco’s website today. “It is in fact inflationary, and, if truth be told, somewhat of a Ponzi scheme. It raises bond prices to create the illusion of high annual returns, but ultimately it reaches a dead end where those prices can no longer go up.”
The Fed, led by Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, will announce another round of large-scale asset purchases when policy makers meet next week after deploying $1.7 trillion to pull the economy out of the financial crisis, according to a survey of the 18 primary dealers that trade debt with the central bank. Fed officials, who already cut interest rates almost to zero, are discussing more purchases of Treasuries to flood markets with cheap money as well as strategies for raising inflation expectations to prevent stagnating prices from undermining the recovery.
Gross, a founder and co-chief investment officer of Pimco, said in March that bonds may have seen their best days while making an argument for investors to own fewer. He reduced holdings of government-related debt in the Total Return Fund for the third straight month in September, after the securities accounted for 63 percent of assets in June, the highest since it held an equal amount in October 2009.

Less Government Debt

The $252 billion Total Return Fund’s investment in government debt was cut to 33 percent of assets in September, from 36 percent the previous month, according to the company’s website. Pimco doesn’t comment directly on monthly changes in portfolio holdings.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note dropped from a 2010 high of 4.01 percent in April to a low of 2.33 percent on Oct. 8, according to Bloomberg data, as investors purchased Treasuries in anticipation of further asset purchases by the central bank. The record of 2.04 percent was set in December 2008.
“Having arrived at its destination, the market then offers near zero percent returns and a picking of the creditor’s pocket via inflation and negative real interest rates,” Gross wrote. “It will likely signify the end of a great 30-year bull market in bonds and the necessity for bond managers and, yes, equity managers to adjust to a new environment,” Gross wrote.

Deflation Threat

Treasuries have returned 8.3 percent this year after losing 3.7 percent in 2009, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch indexes.
The Fed is driven to further easing due to low inflation and a threat of deflation, where falling asset prices, including home values, result in consumers and businesses that are less willing to spend and invest. Inflation, a rise in the prices of goods and services, would enable more value, production and consumer activity.
“This is not a Bernanke scheme, because this is his only alternative and he shares no responsibility for its origin,” Gross wrote. “I call it a Sammy scheme, in honor of Uncle Sam and the politicians -- as well as citizens -- who have brought us to this critical moment in time. You and I, and the politicians that we elect every two years, deserve all the blame.”

Volcker Fed

Policy makers have historically focused on containing inflation rather than preventing deflation. Core consumer prices, which exclude food and fuel, were little changed in September, capping a 0.8 percent increase in the past 12 months, the smallest year-over-year gain since 1961.
Inflation climbed to a 14.8 percent annual rate in March 1980, driving 10-year yields to 13.65 percent that year and to an all-time high of 15.8 percent the following year. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker broke the back of inflation by raising rates as high as 20 percent, even as the economy slipped into the longest post-World War II recession to win back confidence among investors.
By the time Volcker stepped down from the Fed in 1987, inflation slowed to 4.3 percent and benchmark borrowing costs were 6.75 percent.

‘Liquidity Trap’

“We are, as even some Fed Governors now publically admit, in a ‘liquidity trap,’ where interest rates or trillions in QEII asset purchases may not stimulate borrowing or lending because consumer demand is just not there,” Gross wrote. “Escaping from a liquidity trap may be impossible, much like light trapped in a black hole.”
Under what Pimco calls the “new normal,” investors should expect lower-than-average historical returns with heightened regulation, lower consumption, slower growth and a shrinking global role for the U.S. economy.
“If QEII cannot reflate capital markets, if it can’t produce 2 percent inflation and an assumed reduction of unemployment rates back towards historical levels, then it will be a long, painful slog back to prosperity,” Gross wrote.
As part of adjusting to a new normal, Pimco began offering equity funds in April, and had inflows of about $1 billion, Pimco said in September. The firm moved into stocks to allow customers to diversify their holdings as the global economy changes and areas such as emerging markets outperform developed regions.
Pimco added to its mortgage holdings in September to 28 percent of assets, from 21 percent the prior month. Pimco also expanded its emerging-market debt to 12 percent last month, the highest since at least September 2006. Non-U.S. developed debt was unchanged at 6 percent.
The Total Return Fund, also the world’s biggest mutual fund, handed investors a gain of about 11.78 percent in the past year, beating about 76 percent of its peers, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Pimco, a unit of Munich-based insurer Allianz SE, managed $1.236 trillion of assets as of September.

To contact the reporter on this story: Susanne Walker in New York at [email protected]
 

negusneg

New Member
Seeking Alpha

Is the Bull Market in Bonds Finally Coming to an End?


The bond market has been on a long bull run for about 30 years now, but the salad days may soon be winding to a close. Concerns about inflation and corporate debt coming do could hit ETFs right in the solar plexus and investors need to look out.
Bonds of all shape and size – munis, Treasuries, junk and corporate – have long been in favor with investors.
David Pett for Financial Post reports that for nearly 30 years, the bond market has been on an almost uninterrupted bull run, thanks to growing confidence that inflation was gone, and the the tech wreck and financial meltdown are behind us.

With record-low interest rates poised to move higher, inflation looming and the sovereign debt crisis in Europe threatening to spill over, the great bond rally may soon falter. We need to be prepared to make moves as warranted.
The junk bond market in particular could be set for a tumble. With huge bills about to hit corporations and the federal government around the same time, the worry is that some companies will have trouble getting new loans, spurring defaults and a wave of bankruptcies, says Nelson D. Schwartz for The New York Times.

Sovereign debt aside, the approaching scramble for corporate financing could strain the broader economy as jobs are cut, consumer spending is scaled back and credit is tightened for both consumers and businesses. And as inflation continues to loom like a dark shadow, investors are pondering if it is time to exit the bond market.
Is it time? Let your exit strategy determine that for you. The strategy we use is exiting when a position has gone 8% off the recent high or below its 200-day moving average.

  • iShares Barclays Aggregate Bond (AGG)
C04
  • iShares Barclays 1-3 Year Treasury (SHY)
C04
  • Vanguard Short-Term Bond (BSV)
C04
  • SPDR Barclays Capital High Yield (JNK)
C04

Full Disclosure: Tom Lydon’s clients own shares of SHY.

About the author: Tom Lydon




Tom Lydon is proprietor of ETF Trends, a website with daily news and commentary about the fast-changing trends in the exchange traded fund (ETF) industry. Mr. Lydon is also president of Global Trends Investments, an investment advisory firm specializing in the creation of customized portfolios... More
 

negusneg

New Member
Nassim Taleb

Taleb Says ‘Every Human’ Should Short U.S. Treasuries (Update2)

By Michael Patterson and Cordell Eddings - February 4, 2010 11:00 EST

data

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of "The Black Swan"




Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of “The Black Swan” said “every single human being” should bet U.S. Treasury bonds will decline, citing the policies of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and the Obama administration.
It’s “a no brainer” to sell short Treasuries, Taleb, a principal at Universa Investments LP in Santa Monica, California, said at a conference in Moscow today. “Every single human being should have that trade.”
Taleb said investors should bet on a rise in long-term U.S. Treasury yields, which move inversely to prices, as long as Bernanke and White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers are in office, without being more specific. Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor who predicted the credit crisis, also said at the conference that the U.S. dollar will weaken against Asian and “commodity” currencies such as the Brazilian real over the next two or three years.
The Fed and U.S. agencies have lent, spent or guaranteed $9.66 trillion to lift the economy from the worst recession since the Great Depression, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Bernanke, who in December 2008 slashed the central bank’s target rate for overnight loans between banks to virtually zero, flooded the economy with more than $1 trillion in the largest monetary expansion in U.S. history.
In a short sale, an investor borrows a security and sells it, expecting to profit from a decline by repurchasing it later at a lower price.

“Dynamite in the Hands of Children”

President Barack Obama has increased the U.S. marketable debt to a record $7.27 trillion as he tries to sustain the recovery from last year’s recession. The Obama administration projects the U.S. budget deficit will rise to a record $1.6 trillion in the 2011 fiscal year.
“Deficits are like putting dynamite in the hands of children,” Taleb said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “They can get out of control very quickly.”
Taleb argued in “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable” that history is littered with rare events that can’t be predicted by trends. The best-selling book came out in 2007 before the global credit crisis sparked an economic slump and $1.7 trillion of losses at banks and financial institutions.
“The problem we have in the United States, the level of debt is still very high and being converted to government debt,” Taleb said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “We are worse-off today than we were last year. In the United States and in Europe, you have fewer people employed and a larger amount of debt.”

Credit Outlook

Moody’s Investors Service Inc. said on Feb. 2 that the U.S. government’s Aaa bond rating will come under pressure in the future unless additional measures are taken to reduce budget deficits projected for the next decade.
Treasuries soared during the financial crisis, gaining 14 percent in 2008, as investors sought the relative safety of U.S. government debt. They fell 3.7 percent last year, according to Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch Unit, as risk aversion eased and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rallied 23 percent. So far this year U.S. government debt has gained 1.17 percent.
Yields fell today on concern European countries including Greece, Portugal and Spain face difficulty financing budget deficits. The yield on the benchmark 10-year note fell 6 basis points, or 0.06 percentage point, to 3.64 percent at 10:54 a.m. in New York, according to BGCantor Market Data.
“Democracies can’t handle austerity measures very well,” Taleb added. “We’re going to have a severe problem.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Michael Patterson in London at [email protected]; Cordell Eddings in New York at [email protected]
 

negusneg

New Member
MoneyWeek
Is this the end of the great bond bull market?


By Associate Editor David Stevenson Dec 10, 2010
david-stevenson3.ashx



What's going on in the world's government bond markets?
All of a sudden, yields are rising fast again. In other words, sovereign bond prices are plunging. And we're not just talking about the likes of Ireland, where the yield surge has been driven by the recent bailout. (Yesterday, by the way, Fitch Ratings slashed the Irish credit rating for the second time in two months).

No, we're talking about the planet's big boys – or should I say big borrowers. You can now get between 0.5% and 0.75% a year more by buying a ten-year US, UK or German government bond than you could two months ago. Even yields on Japanese sovereign debt, traditionally the lowest of the lot, have climbed sharply.
So are we now finally seeing the end of the great long-term government bond bull market? If so, why – and what's next?
The big picture for bonds

Let's look at the big picture here. The ten-year US Treasury bond – which matures in a decade's time – is probably the world's most widely watched sovereign debt security. For measuring long-term interest rates, it's seen as just about the best benchmark around. And it's been firmly in bullish mode for almost 30 years.
Back in October 1981, ten-year Treasuries yielded a stunning 16%. Nowadays, it's almost impossible to imagine the US government having to pay anything like this to borrow money by issuing such top-notch securities. But it did.
After the two 1970s "oil shocks", when crude costs soared following the Iranian revolution, global inflation was rampant. And when the cost of living surges, so do ten-year bond yields. That's because investors won't buy them unless they're offered higher long-term returns on their cash.
Fast forward to 2008. By then the world was very different. Inflation wasn't an issue. Over-indebted consumers had to rein back spending. Prices in the shops were driven down by lack of demand. Shares cratered as company profits were crushed. Property values were plunging as buyers dried up and forced sellers appeared.
Meanwhile, global central banks slashed interest rates to try to kick-start economies again. So the fixed income streams paid on sovereign debt had become more valuable. This all conspired to drive government bond yields down, and prices higher.
Then on top of that, we had QE – quantitative easing, aka money printing. QE has mainly been used to buy government bonds. This powered prices yet more. In mid-2008, ten-year US Treasuries were paying a mere 2%. Even two months ago, they yielded only 2.38%.
You get the picture. Up until now, just about every economic force has been moving in favour of lower sovereign debt yields. Yet globally these have just started rising rapidly, as the chart below shows.
10-12-10-MM01-bonds.ashx

Source: Bloomberg
So what's going sour, and so fast, for investors in government bonds?
In a nutshell, sovereign debt has become yet another financial bubble. It had to burst – the only question was when. The catalyst seems to have been the early November QE2 announcement in the US, where the Fed didn't give the markets quite as much new bond buying as they wanted: What does QE2 mean for your investments?
Three reasons this bull market could be over

But if that hadn't done the trick, something else would have – because financial bubbles always burst at some point. Here are three reasons that suggest the bull market is now over – and that this bond blowout is likely to get a lot worse.
First, just about all the potential bond purchasers are now in the market. Major financial institutions have lent to the US government "in droves", says Eric Englund on LewRockwell.com. Treasuries have gained "rock star status". In other words, there's hardly anyone left to buy.
Second, global sovereign liabilities are now so big, and growing so fast, they're right out of control. "No government will be able to repay the debts outstanding", says Egon von Greyerz of Matterhorn Fund Management. "So there will either be government defaults, moratoria or money printing that totally destroys the value of their bonds".
Third, global inflation is likely to make a comeback much faster than many expect. This depends partly on China, which will soon be forced to raise interest rates to combat its rapidly-growing inflation problems. That will soak up Chinese domestic savings. In turn, bond yields worldwide will be driven up as governments are forced to compete for the cash they need.
So how high will sovereign bond yields rise?

In the US, Russell Napier of CLSA is talking about inflation climbing to the 4% region while ten-year Treasury yields hit 6%. It's hard to disagree. Over the last 50 years the average yield on these bonds has been just above that level.
How can you play this?
Clearly, then, there could be a long way for global sovereign yields to rise yet (and so for bond prices to fall). So how can investors take advantage? I mentioned an Ultrashort ETF for playing China yesterday – there's a similar product for shorting US treasuries. The ProShares UltraShort 7-10 Year Treasury (NYSE: PST) goes up, and down, twice as fast as the opposite of the Barclays Capital 7-10 Year US Treasury Index. In other words, if the latter falls, holders of PST gain double this move.
There are similar risks to the Chinese ETF, as the prices of funds like this are recalculated daily. So they're really only suitable for short-term trades – if you attempt to buy and hold you'll find the ETF performance can vary from that of the underlying asset. That means you need to get your timing right.
However, if you're more interested in a 'buy and hold' way to play this story, my colleague Simon Caufield recently uncovered a suitable fund. He wrote about it in a MoneyWeek magazine cover story a few weeks ago – you can read the piece here: How to short government bonds.
 

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