Like a motorway during rush hour, investors are clogging the exit slip-roads from the US bond market.
No matter that the Federal Reserve and chairman Ben Bernanke explicitly and repeatedly linked any future slowdown in its monthly $85bn of bond purchases to a substantial improvement for the economy, Treasury investors heard only one thing: the interest rate cycle is turning, it’s time to sell bonds.
John Briggs, strategist at RBS Securities, says the Fed has signalled that unless the data weaken, the tapering of “quantitative easing”, or QE, should start in September: “Odds favour a September start to tapering, with the burden of proof on the data to prove otherwise.”