4 ms·

> Somebody is on the wrong side of this trade in a big way. The reason why European yields are so low is because financial institutions are forced to own govt

> Somebody is on the wrong side of this trade in a big way. The reason why European yields are so low is because financial institutions are forced to own govt bonds. That is it. Europe is one of the only markets where you really see this, yields in the US could certainly move higher or lower but they trade at a rational level. In Europe, the price is just wrong (because no-one is doing the trade to be right or wrong, they are doing the trade because of regulations). Also, making some kind of linear prediction for rates based on the drop over the last 40 years makes no sense. Rates are actually stationary, but the reason they have trended strongly over the past four decades is because of changes in inflation expectations and aging of society which has brought down the natural rate of interest significantly. Outside of this, the underlying properties of rates are stationary...the same as every other valuation measure.

dragontamer 5y ago
> The reason why European yields are so low is because financial institutions are forced to own govt bonds. That is it. Same in the USA. All bank deposits need to be balanced out with a certain number of US Treasury bonds / notes as a reserve. There are also huge institutions, such as the Social Security Trust Fund, who was forced to buy US Bonds from the 1980s through 2000s to prepare for the baby-boomer retirement cycle. So lots of groups are in fact, "forced" to own US Treasury bonds.
- hogFeast 5y ago
  No, it isn't the same in the US. Reserves are vault cash plus deposits at the Fed. You cannot use USTs to count towards your reserves (and it wouldn't matter if you could, the reserve ratio isn't a binding monetary policy tool, excess reserves in the US banking system are close to $1trn). You are right that pension funds own a lot of bonds...this makes sense because there are very few long-dated securities that can be used to match liabilities...but the US pension fund system is relatively dynamic, and has a big allocation to alternatives. The European savings market is also totally different to the US: outside of govt bonds their financial markets are essentially non-existent relative to the US, lots of people save by putting their money into banks who then invest in govt bonds (the reasons for this are slightly complex, but loan demand in the US is relatively strong in the US, and non-existent in Europe so banks own a ton of govt bonds there), insurance sector is far larger (and Solvency II means govt bonds...lots of them), and there are more DB than DC schemes...so pension funds are far smaller proportionally (and the demand for non-bond assets is, typically, smaller). Pension funds are always going to own a lot of USTs but you just don't see the same pressure on US yields. Again though, don't take my word for it...look at the price. The Italian 10yr has traded under the US for the past five years or so...that clearly makes no sense.
ProjectArcturis 5y ago
Can you expand on that? What regulations require European banks to hold government bonds? If it's obvious to everyone that Euro bonds are too expensive, why don't American hedge funds short them? I was under the impression that Euro-zone bond rates were so low mainly because the market is expecting economic stagnation and a too-hawkish ECB.
- hogFeast 5y ago
  Why would you short them? That sounds like a terrible trade. I am not sure why they would have to be "American" either. Hawkish??? The ECB? They own 50% of the govt bond market. They have been throwing literally trillions at banks. Because of the Draghi "whatever it takes", they are the most dovish central bank in the world by far, it isn't close. They were doing massive QE worth trillions when growth was 2-3%, permanent QE. Definitely, the ECB is a big reason why rates are low though, because they have removed 50% of the supply of risk-free assets ("risk-free"...some European govts are obviously insolvent so..."risk-free" is a somewhat unclear concept). And no, Europe isn't economically stagnant...it is a difficult to be brief but the main issue with any high-level comment about Europe is that you have a collection of countries that are almost totally economically dissimilar. So everything is just totally imbalanced, and there is no real way to balance things (the ECB is making this worse). So you can't really talk about European growth being stagnant or rates being affected by growth...because they are just totally separate, ECB policy is appropriate for maybe four countries in the EU, and no-one else...so it is difficult to apply any kind of logic to that process. There is no way to be brief. But the EU-level regulations are solvency ii, bank capital rules (some of these rules are national, but there are EU-level rules too), and the saving culture of Europe (i.e. no financial markets, suspicion of capitalism, suspicion of decentralization). A lot of the rules that relate to pension funds are only relevant at the national level (because the structure of pension funds/savings vary by country)...again, it is tricky to generalise because the economies in the EU are generally nothing alike each other.

dragontamer 5y ago

> The reason why European yields are so low is because financial institutions are forced to own govt bonds. That is it. Same in the USA. All bank deposits need to be balanced out with a certain number of US Treasury bonds / notes as a reserve. There are also huge institutions, such as the Social Security Trust Fund, who was forced to buy US Bonds from the 1980s through 2000s to prepare for the baby-boomer retirement cycle. So lots of groups are in fact, "forced" to own US Treasury bonds.

hogFeast 5y ago
No, it isn't the same in the US. Reserves are vault cash plus deposits at the Fed. You cannot use USTs to count towards your reserves (and it wouldn't matter if you could, the reserve ratio isn't a binding monetary policy tool, excess reserves in the US banking system are close to $1trn). You are right that pension funds own a lot of bonds...this makes sense because there are very few long-dated securities that can be used to match liabilities...but the US pension fund system is relatively dynamic, and has a big allocation to alternatives. The European savings market is also totally different to the US: outside of govt bonds their financial markets are essentially non-existent relative to the US, lots of people save by putting their money into banks who then invest in govt bonds (the reasons for this are slightly complex, but loan demand in the US is relatively strong in the US, and non-existent in Europe so banks own a ton of govt bonds there), insurance sector is far larger (and Solvency II means govt bonds...lots of them), and there are more DB than DC schemes...so pension funds are far smaller proportionally (and the demand for non-bond assets is, typically, smaller). Pension funds are always going to own a lot of USTs but you just don't see the same pressure on US yields. Again though, don't take my word for it...look at the price. The Italian 10yr has traded under the US for the past five years or so...that clearly makes no sense.

ProjectArcturis 5y ago

Can you expand on that? What regulations require European banks to hold government bonds? If it's obvious to everyone that Euro bonds are too expensive, why don't American hedge funds short them? I was under the impression that Euro-zone bond rates were so low mainly because the market is expecting economic stagnation and a too-hawkish ECB.

hogFeast 5y ago
Why would you short them? That sounds like a terrible trade. I am not sure why they would have to be "American" either. Hawkish??? The ECB? They own 50% of the govt bond market. They have been throwing literally trillions at banks. Because of the Draghi "whatever it takes", they are the most dovish central bank in the world by far, it isn't close. They were doing massive QE worth trillions when growth was 2-3%, permanent QE. Definitely, the ECB is a big reason why rates are low though, because they have removed 50% of the supply of risk-free assets ("risk-free"...some European govts are obviously insolvent so..."risk-free" is a somewhat unclear concept). And no, Europe isn't economically stagnant...it is a difficult to be brief but the main issue with any high-level comment about Europe is that you have a collection of countries that are almost totally economically dissimilar. So everything is just totally imbalanced, and there is no real way to balance things (the ECB is making this worse). So you can't really talk about European growth being stagnant or rates being affected by growth...because they are just totally separate, ECB policy is appropriate for maybe four countries in the EU, and no-one else...so it is difficult to apply any kind of logic to that process. There is no way to be brief. But the EU-level regulations are solvency ii, bank capital rules (some of these rules are national, but there are EU-level rules too), and the saving culture of Europe (i.e. no financial markets, suspicion of capitalism, suspicion of decentralization). A lot of the rules that relate to pension funds are only relevant at the national level (because the structure of pension funds/savings vary by country)...again, it is tricky to generalise because the economies in the EU are generally nothing alike each other.