Bond selloff abates as dollar snaps Trump rally

Benchmark treasuries rebound as dollar rally ends

The fallout from Donald Trump’s election to the US presidency eased off infinancial markets with benchmark Treasuries and emerging-market assets reboundingas a dollar rally ended.

The yield on US bonds due in a decade fell from this year’s high and German notes snapped a six-day slide. Japanese debt fell after an auction, pushing the 10-year yield to zero for the first time since September. Bloomberg’s dollar index was set for the first loss since Americans voted Trump in a week ago and MSCI’s gauge of shares in developing nations rose from a four-month low.

Trump won the November 8th presidential election after pledging to cut taxes, spend more than $500 billion on infrastructure and restrict imports. His victory triggered a record selloff in global bonds last week amid speculation the proposed fiscal stimulus will fuel inflation and prompt a faster pace of interest-rate increases in the world’s largest economy.

There is some skepticism that Trump’s proposals will be fully backed by Congress and technical indicators signaled many post-election moves in financial markets were excessive.”Risks are elevated, and we are expecting further increases in volatility as markets attempt to second-guess the policies that might eventually come out from the US,” said Michael McCarthy, chief market strategist at CMC Markets in Sydney. “One of the challenges for markets is that all of these moves are not straightforward in terms of impact. In a lot of cases, we just have to see how things play out.”

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Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Jeffrey Lacker said Monday that easier fiscal policy may require higher rates, but it’s too early for the central bank to react to potential policy changes by the incoming administration of president-elect Donald Trump.

Bonds

Ten-year USTreasuries rose, pushing their yield down by six basis points to 2.20 per cent as of 8:05 a.m. London time. The 41 basis point jump over the last three trading sessions marked the steepest climb in more than seven years and the 14-day relative strength index for the securities indicated they were the most oversold since 1990.

Ford O’Neil, who oversees about $100 billion in bonds for Fidelity Investments, said the sharp run-up in yields following the election may not be justified given that Trump will face resistance from Congress in getting his fiscal stimulus plans approved.Japan’s 10-year bond yield increased to zero, having been negative for almost eight weeks, as a gauge of demand weakened at a sale of five-year securities on Tuesday.The yield on similar-maturity German bonds fell one basis point to 0.31 per cent, after doubling in the previous five sessions.

Bloomberg