On Monday, the two-year U.S. Treasury note yield hit its highest level since 2009 and finished at 1.414 percent. Bond yields move inversely to the price.
“There’s some sort of technical things you can try and minimize the impact for example, so a lot of the fund trends are steep for that reason and therefore that steepness of the curve is quite good protection when interest rates are rising,” Athey said.
Meanwhile, Bill Blain, head of capital markets at Mint Partners, said in a note on Monday: “Global Bonds: 10-(year) Treasurys were 2.45 percent in (January), and 2.31 percent this morning. 10-yr (German) Bunds were 0.36 percent in Jan and 0.46 percent this morning. 10-year (U.K.) Gilts were 1.42 percent in Jan and 1.28 percent this morning. Nothing to get stressed over.”
“In short, it’s been an up, down and shake it all about kind of year … There are clear signals of concern about what the withdrawal of ‘extraordinary monetary policy’ will mean. Normalization is seen as a threat by some, but by others as a very useful ‘reset’ to get markets back on a properly priced realistic track,” he noted.
