Francesco Garzarelli from Goldman Sachs writes about the forecast for 3% year-end yields in 2016 up from 2.3% now
This expectation is built on the following set of assumptions:
1-An ongoing above-trend economic expansion: US 10-year Treasury yields currently compare with a 'fair value' estimate of 2.7% (i.e., are around 1 standard deviation too low) based on our Bond Sudoku model.Factoring in our economists' macro forecasts for above-trend GDP growth, an acceleration of inflation and higher policy rates in the US alongside macro developments abroad, our model 'fair value' estimate increases to 3.4% by end-2016. In forecasting a 3% yield by next December, we presently assume the 'valuation gap' to remain the same as today's, to reflect the ongoing QE in the Euro area and Japan.
2- Fed hiking more than priced into the forwards: An important ingredient in our estimates is our US Economics team forecast of the Fed hiking four times this year, or by a cumulative 100bp to 1.30%. The market instead sees rates at 90bp after the 14 Dec 2016 FOMC meeting, with two-thirds of the probability mass in a 60-110bp range. Using the market pricing for the effective Fed Funds rate, our measure of 'fair value' for Treasuries would be around 10-15bp lower (or 3.25%), all else equal.
3- An upward shift in medium-term inflation expectations: We see CPI inflation picking up during 2016, led by the services categories.Although this is already reflected in the fair value estimates discussed above, an increase in service inflation (ex-energy) from the trailing 2.9% towards 3.5% (levels last seen in 2007-08) may well act to lift medium term inflation expectations, and thus the term premium. Such an outcome underpins our view on that the 2-10-year nominal term structure will steepen over the next couple of quarters. To be sure, the high volatility and downward pressures in crude oil prices continues to keep the term premium depressed. But we expect these effects to wane and reverse during the course of 2016, as crude oil prices increase towards our 12-month forecast of US$ 50 per barrel on WTI, from US$ 37 per barrel at the time of writing.
4- A higher expected terminal rate and an increase in term premium: An historical analysis of the behaviour of the US yield curve during previous four Fed tightening cycles reveals that the market has always progressively revised upwards its view on the 'neutral' level of rates as the Fed pushed policy rates upwards (see 'How Will Bond Yields Move in the 100 Days After the First Hike ', 11 Sep 2015). In other words, expectations on the degree of monetary tightening the economy could withstand have in the past tended to be adaptive. We judge the current market-implied level of neutral rates (around 50bp in real terms) as too low. By contrast, as the hiking cycle extends, the norm is for the 'term premium' to decline from relatively high levels in proportion to terminal rate expectations (on the average of the past 4 cycles, around 75%), a phenomenon particularly evident in the 2004 cycle (here we use the NY Fed's ACM estimate of the term premium). Presently, the term premium is zero. Although there have been periods, like in the 1960s, when the term premium was very low, it has not been negative outside short periods of time."
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