IGOV News and Press, iShares S&P/Citigroup International Treasury Bond From 02/18/20

One topic of research that keeps popping up is the question of what the central bank objective function should be. In simpler terms, what is the target of the central bank? (At present, most central banks have an inflation target, possibly with secondary objectives.) This is a preoccupation of...

Don't fight the Fed, as the saying goes. But at this point, it's reasonable to ask how much fight the Federal Reserve (Fed) has left. The Fed played an oversized role in stimulating markets over the past decade and became an indefinite backstop. But what's the line in the sand that the Fed wil...

One of the factors in my estimation that will be a huge part of 2020 is the Heaven that has been created by the central banks of the world for Borrowers. We are still tracking approximately $14 trillion in negatively yielding debt and while this number is not currently at its high mark of $17 ...

Nope, this is no attestation about Disney. This has nothing to do with any park, though sometimes it can be amusing. This is a very macro comment about how the markets are lining up these days. We are currently being driven by themes, in a manner that is relatively new. For quite a while it ...

In a month filled with central bank decisions and notable political events, yields on 10-year benchmark bonds fell in January across sovereign bond markets. The biggest move came from Australia's 10-year note, whose mid-yield plunged 48.5 basis points to finish January at 0.91%. Despite the ec...

By Hemant Baijal, Head of Multi-Sector Portfolio Management, Global Debt Senior Portfolio Manager ; Meral Karasulu, PhD, Director of Fixed Income Research, Global Debt Team ; Claudia Castro, PhD, Director, Fixed Income Research ; Turgut Kisinbay, PhD, Director of Fixed Incom...

Investors appear willing to grant a mulligan to the global economy and corporations/stocks negatively impacted by the outbreak/devastating effects of the coronavirus in China and elsewhere. While no one knows for sure how long it will take to control the coronavirus, it remains clear that the ...

Globally, central banks undertook monetary easing efforts in 2019 by the most since the 2008 financial crisis as shown in the chart below courtesy of the IMF. This enabled unsustainable deficits, debts, businesses and financial Ponzis to continue a while longer and made the global economy an...

Are negative interests here to stay? A recent study by Yale economist Paul Schmelzing suggests that global real interest rates "could soon enter permanently negative territory." In Mesopotamia , around the third millennium B.C., there were two types of money circulating: barley and silv...

By James J. Clarke How do we think about a world of ultra-low interest rates as equity investors? To us, interest rates are much more than determining what discount rate to use in a valuation model. At extreme levels, the rate environment introduces distortions that impact management behav...