Bond Vigilantes started in 2006, when the world looked pretty different
When we started the Bond Vigilantes blog back towards the end of 2006, the world looked pretty different – and even the term “bond vigilantes” had fallen out of use. Looking back at our first couple of months of blogging, we were writing about the first signs of weakness in the Chicago housing market, our worries about aggressive lending by the UK banks, and the new developments in the supercharged CDO market. But this was still a world in which Central Bankers had “won” the war on inflation after a two decade long battle, where the term “sovereign debt crisis” was solely used in relation to the emerging markets, and where Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns sat at the top table of global investment banks.
Almost 20 years later, the world is a very different place. As global inflationary pressures following the Covid-19 pandemic have mostly subsided, investors are still assessing the impact of restrictive monetary policies on economies globally, and what that might mean for the future path of interest rates and bond yields. Central bankers continue to delicately balance between encouraging growth with anchoring inflation close to their targets.
“I used to think if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or a .400 baseball hitter. But now I want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.”
James Carville
As populations feel the squeeze from two directions – mediocre income growth and higher goods prices – being a self-proclaimed “bond vigilante” feels somewhat uncomfortable. Is it right that the markets should have the power that James Carville talked about in his famous quote? Is an AAA credit rating worth more than half a million jobs? Is stable inflation more important than growth?
So this blog is here for us to share our views on the things that matter to bond investors – inflation, interest rates and the global economy – as well as to talk about the bond markets themselves. Over the past 18 years, as our team has grown, we have blogged about value in high yield bonds, the outlook for emerging market debt, and new developments in the inflation-linked bond markets. Going forward, we’ll also make sure we let you know our views on the traditional investment grade corporate bond markets – being a good bond vigilante should also be about identifying deteriorating trends in corporate behaviour, as well as that of governments.
So thank you for continuing to support this blog, and let’s hope bond markets stay interesting, but not too interesting.
