On Tuesday, those catalysts took the form of more liquidity from the PBoC, an emergency OPEC+ pow wow aimed at shoring up oil prices and the confusion in Iowa. McElligott, ever the keen observer and not one to eschew colloquialisms and humor, puts things in context. To wit, from his Tuesday missive:
Last night’s primary disaster in Iowa for the Dems (with some indications that Biden was tracking at 4th)—which is “trolling-ly” being spun on Twitter as “Trump Wins Iowa Primary,” and driving some of this current “risk-ON” trade overnight and havens again on their back-foot as Trump is viewed as higher probability to win against “hard left” candidate—is of interest, because it shows that it doesn’t take a ton to cause some outsized moves to reverse some of last month’s / last week’s “extremes”.
Does any of this mean we should expect to hear McElligott (or anyone else, for that matter) suddenly pivot back to a hard reflationist narrative centered around sharply higher yields on the back of, for example, the assumption of a “kitchen-sink-type” stimulus push out of Beijing?
In a word: No.
“Looking-out one year into end-2020, I am simply on the record as saying that there was no true catalyst for a rates selloff to the extent that many strategists and market participants were prognosticating”, Charlie says, before reiterating his own view, which he described in December as “more realistic”:
This current UST “cheapening from the prior extreme” is just another swing in the pendulum back from one end of the range (1.50) to a more stable state (1.60), and not a new regime of risk-taking beyond a tactical trade tied to positioning.