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Rallying bond yields give green light to risk assets | Trustnet Skip to the content

Rallying bond yields give green light to risk assets

21 August 2012

Anthony Gilham, portfolio manager at Skandia Investment Group, says that when gilts outperform US Treasuries it is usually a good sign for equity markets.

The last few years have bucked the tradition of a quiet summer in the Square Mile and we all thought summer 2012 was going to follow this recent trend. 

ALT_TAG But despite the turbulence in Europe, London has felt relatively quiet as the markets have managed to hold on to some form of stability.

Yet over the past month, bond markets haven't behaved as though they're on holiday.

Credit spreads from sovereigns, to corporate investment grade, to high yield have rallied, but what really caught my eye was the behaviour of so-called government safe havens. 

Over recent weeks, yields have moved out nearly 0.5 per cent in the US as measured at the 10-year point on the curve and now stand 0.1 per cent higher than UK gilts.

This might not sound much, but this difference, or basis, has shifted significantly over the past few weeks, meaning that UK gilts now yield less than "ultra safe" US government bonds. 

Both pieces of data are significant. Rising bond yields are often correlated with improving economic data, which is what we have observed in the US. 

That gilts have outperformed US Treasuries further supports the perceptions about the relative state of the two economies. 

However, of greater interest is what the relationship between US Treasuries and gilts has told us about risk appetite in the past.

Looking back through time, the UK/US government bond spread has behaved like a proxy for risk.

One explanation for this is that the US government bond market is more flow-driven than the UK and we are seeing investors dump negative real yields in government bonds in favour of riskier assets like credit and equities. 

There are signs among UK survey and employment data that the indicated recession might not be all that it seems, which could mean gilts catch up.

Of course, there are a number of negatives floating around, such as the US fiscal cliff, but with the macro data picking up, and the European situation holding together as markets smell a plan, the environment for risk is looking somewhat brighter than it did a few short months ago.

Anthony Gillham is a portfolio manager at Skandia Investment Group. The views expressed here are his own.

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