FLGV News and Press, Franklin Liberty U.S. Treasury Bond From 06/08/21

If the Federal Reserve’s recent intervention in both the stock and the bond markets is more extreme than Ben Bernanke’s, doesn’t that mean the reaction to any future tapering would be more extreme, too? It sure could be, given the subdued volatility we have seen i...

According to the US Treasury, the federal government owes $28.2 trillion. The debt was just under $25 trillion at the end of April a year ago. Purchasing power is strong, indeed. However, government debt is on an unsustainable trajectory. What if debtors could replace their dollar...

We expect the European Central Bank to maintain its current pace of asset purchases even though the economic restart is gaining momentum. U.S. nonfarm payrolls growth picked up in May. We caution against extrapolating too much from erratic near-term data amid a powerful restart. U...

The latest leading economic data indicate that the recovery is intact and that the strong GDP growth reported for the first quarter of this year will continue. We were looking for the US economy to recover rapidly during the second half of 2020, level off during the first half of 2021...

The VIX has hurtled lower, to just over 15, and at this rate, it will soon be in the low teens. The same is the case for the MOVE index for fixed-income volatility, which is also now clearly driving lower, hitting a 13-month low of 53.4 in May. I suspect vol selling will remain lu...

This has been a run in stocks from the March lows, all while without even really experiencing the usually recession beforehand. That run has been coupled with record revisions of earning forecasts, setting us up for what would seem to be an inevitable fall. However, markets can trend ...

Even as 26.6 million more potential workers arrived, given last year’s deep recession there were in May 2021 only 6.5 million more payrolls than there had been in October 2008. The recovery was said to have been on a winning streak (vaccines, gov’t payments, etc.), so it...

Taper talk is back, and with it the risk of higher USD rates volatility. Big liquidity going back to the Fed has eased, but is still very large. NGeu will make an earlier-than-expected start in the Euro bond market and is set to become a key contributor to the growth of sovereign ...

The major asset classes delivered across-the-board gains for a second month in a row in May. Everything apart from cash was up last month, led by a sizzling rally in foreign inflation-linked government bonds. The FTSE Russell World Inflation Index ex-US surged 4.0% last month, the...

On one hand, prices that are falling too quickly have the potential to hurt purchasing power by raising the real value and servicing cost of liabilities. On the other, prices that are rising too quickly can hurt purchasing power by reducing the real value of income. Growing demand or ...