When the curve speaks: what the bond market is telling us
By Ben Lord - 15 October 2025
In 2020, the bond market awoke from a decade-long slumber and moved long-dated bonds higher, in what we call a curve steepening, even whilst short-end rates were (possibly) at paradigm lows. It was easy to look at this steepening move as being driven by the quite justified cutting of interest rates in response to the global pandemic and the seizure in the global economy that took place, and therefore to stop there and ignore any deeper or more subtle message.