Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Mertain Talks, Money Markets, roundup debrief on
Speaker 2: the biggest stories in markets and economics. As I'm sure
Speaker 2: you've already walked to, I'm joined Stebeck, senior report and
Speaker 2: author of my distilled newsletter, and that most of the
Speaker 2: day's show. While Marrin is out on holiday for a change,
Speaker 2: it's not me with me is longtime friend of the
Speaker 2: show and usefully our government boinds. Go to a guy,
Speaker 2: Marcus Ashworth. Marcus is a Bloomberg opinion columns covering European
Speaker 2: markets and is also our go to guy for all
Speaker 2: things bond related. Marcus, Nice to see again. How's it going?
Speaker 1: What always a pleasure?
Speaker 2: Yes, I'll buy you lunch one of these days. Up
Speaker 2: in these coins? Yeah?
Speaker 1: All the rage or not?
Speaker 2: Actually, what's been going on?
Speaker 1: Sure? Well, it's the second largest bond market in the
Speaker 1: world after US treasuries, and it's obviously the proud owner
Speaker 1: of the largest sort of government debt GDP ratio as well.
Speaker 1: So the Japanese government market has been a backwater in
Speaker 1: the sense of foreign investors for many many years.
Speaker 2: That is very.
Speaker 1: Much owned by the Japanese sure as pension funds and
Speaker 1: particularly Bank in Japan itself, so it owns a lot
Speaker 1: of its own debt, so it's all great, big sort
Speaker 1: of money round about. Nonetheless, we start to have noticeable
Speaker 1: inflation in Japan after many decades of deflation and certainly
Speaker 1: very sort of stagnant growth. But you know, the Japanese
Speaker 1: economy fits the starts are doing quite well. In nominal terms,
Speaker 1: it's growing at five percent, but you take inflation way,
Speaker 1: which is sort of three percent and above and below,
Speaker 1: depending how you look at it. It's perhaps a problem
Speaker 1: now that inflation is coming through the Bank of Japan
Speaker 1: is very reluctant to raise interit traits, but it is
Speaker 1: slowly but very carefully. It just wants to see make
Speaker 1: sure that deflation has finally finally gone away. But there
Speaker 1: are some some nasty signs, which has meant essentially that
Speaker 1: demand for long, long dated debt in Japan, which once
Speaker 1: was a clam out. All these pretension funds used to say,
Speaker 1: I'm forced to buy US treasuriescause of the year, because
Speaker 1: I don't get anything in Japan. Please please put you
Speaker 1: put yields up. Well, now they've got it. They don't
Speaker 1: want it anymore, and that's largely because they've got enough,
Speaker 1: and the Bank of Japan is no longer buying all
Speaker 1: of jgb's that are sweeping up all the loose bits.
Speaker 1: They are trying to passively quantitative titan, which is in essence,
Speaker 1: they're not buying everything that matures in the sense of
Speaker 1: rebuying investing in back of the market. They're slowly but
Speaker 1: very steadily decreasing the matter on their own balance sheet. Well,
Speaker 1: no one's really there to buy it now. Ironically, foreigners
Speaker 1: have been a little bit more active in the last
Speaker 1: few months, seeing yeals going high and they thinking, well,
Speaker 1: let's have a little bit of that. Unfortunately, they've had
Speaker 1: nothing but bad news since they've been getting involved. But
Speaker 1: you know, we really don't have much of a structural
Speaker 1: demand for the long end of Japan. And we've had
Speaker 1: a couple of rubbish auctions. We had a twenty year
Speaker 1: previous week and forty year this week, neither of which
Speaker 1: have gone at all.
Speaker 2: Well, however, and just one thing so very quick, so
Speaker 2: just to be clear, and the auction is when the
Speaker 2: government goes out for the first time and tries to
Speaker 2: borrow the money hasn't it all says we're wating a
Speaker 2: forty year I owe you appeal for it. It was
Speaker 2: like an ip A for equities.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're just issuing new government debt across different points
Speaker 1: on their yell curve from two years out to forty years,
Speaker 1: and they have a schedule which comes up and they
Speaker 1: do anyway, So they they've they've been. You know, as
Speaker 1: all government bonds are sort of well documented when they
Speaker 1: will be issuing, the government will be selling more of them.
Speaker 1: It just depends how many people turn up to buy it. Now,
Speaker 1: normally you'd expect to see at least two to maybe three,
Speaker 1: four five or purposing more times cover. These are well
Speaker 1: flagged liquidity events where you want to buy something that
Speaker 1: you can get to buy a lot of bit at
Speaker 1: one time and get a fairly clear and open price.
Speaker 1: But you know, forty years is a very very long
Speaker 1: maturity and it's a very specialist market. It's only really
Speaker 1: sort of life insurers and pension funds. You might really
Speaker 1: want to buy these things. Anyways. The last couple of
Speaker 1: longer ended auctions have done poorly in relative terms, which
Speaker 1: has brought out a lot of panic, some very sharp
Speaker 1: ye'll moves higher. However, one thing I have many many
Speaker 1: years of trading Japanese government bond's best part of thirty
Speaker 1: five years is not longer. There is always a saying
Speaker 1: he's been known as the widow maker trade trying to
Speaker 1: short jjb's is it falls out. However, you know this
Speaker 1: is because the Japanese authorities are fairly canny when it
Speaker 1: comes to looking after their own market. And they've looked
Speaker 1: like they pulled another stunt, which is they've sent around
Speaker 1: a questionnaire the Ministry of Finance. This is to all
Speaker 1: the various different primary dealers, the main main Japanese. They've
Speaker 1: done one dealers and said how much would you like
Speaker 1: in future? I would you like a lot less? So
Speaker 1: everyone's read between the lines, Oh, they're going to cut
Speaker 1: all the size of all these sales and essentially the
Speaker 1: issue short dated bonds, and that sort of worked a
Speaker 1: bit of its magic. Nonetheless, unfortunately another auction went badly,
Speaker 1: so we we're back, you know, in the mar again.
Speaker 1: But you know, definitely yields are a lot higher than
Speaker 1: they were, seismically higher, and that is a very important
Speaker 1: international thing to watch.
Speaker 2: That sounds good. Just before we get to that certainly
Speaker 2: I understand it is that one of the reasons the
Speaker 2: mind for long dated points like everywhere was high is
Speaker 2: because investos basically, but an an environment, we have the
Speaker 2: thought interest rates and we're going to keep going down
Speaker 2: and deflation was going to continue to be in this
Speaker 2: you And what is harpened since COVID and infleetion took
Speaker 2: off is that that psychology has been destroyed. And also
Speaker 2: obviously inflectionent has going up, so you know, you need
Speaker 2: to get paid for taking the risk where as you're
Speaker 2: dead in before. How much of that is the case
Speaker 2: and how much is it something more structural? It's like,
Speaker 2: did these pension funds not need twenty immaturities anymore? Why
Speaker 2: is that?
Speaker 1: All you said is correct? However, the brutal reality is
Speaker 1: is that the Bank of Japan is not buying as
Speaker 1: much as it used to buy. Owns fifty six percent
Speaker 1: of the entire issuance, and it's trying to reduce that
Speaker 1: and there aren't enough buyers to replace it. It's nothing more,
Speaker 1: nothing less. Demand you know, is lower than supply at
Speaker 1: the moment, there's.
Speaker 2: More salers than buyers.
Speaker 1: Well, yes, there's no buyers. It is not that many sellers,
Speaker 1: but there's no bars at all, so you know, you
Speaker 1: just get to you and often the Japanese gun mole
Speaker 1: market is moribun and it doesn't even trade. It's very
Speaker 1: much by appointment and it's held by very well known
Speaker 1: people that you know, we don't necessarily want to add
Speaker 1: to anything more at the moment, and that's we've got
Speaker 1: this situation whereby if the government comes in to try
Speaker 1: and sell something and no one turns up, in effect,
Speaker 1: or not enough people turn up, the market just doesn't
Speaker 1: want to know. Yeal goes high and higher, the price
Speaker 1: goes low and lower, until eventually this authorities have to
Speaker 1: do something, and that's what they've sort of done by
Speaker 1: begging a big signal. They probably might sell some less,
Speaker 1: but we shall see.
Speaker 2: Moving over from Japan, how does this affect the rest
Speaker 2: of the world right or the US market?
Speaker 1: Has it explained? I mean, Japanese bon yields and interest
Speaker 1: rates have traditionally been very very low, so it's been
Speaker 1: the main home and source of what's known as the
Speaker 1: carry trade, which is a hard thing to understand. Basically,
Speaker 1: what people are doing is they're borrowing in yen and
Speaker 1: then using that money cheaply to buy higher yielding, more
Speaker 1: exciting assets like US text docs for instance, or of
Speaker 1: US bonds. But I know, so a lot of the
Speaker 1: international flows are dependent on liquidity from borrowing in yen.
Speaker 1: If all of a sudden that be comes a lot
Speaker 1: more expensive as has been, it unravels a lot of
Speaker 1: other types of trades. So it is essentially, you know,
Speaker 1: a storm in Japan can can have material effects elsewhere
Speaker 1: at the same time, as we're seeing a sell off
Speaker 1: in US bond yields, particularly the long end as well,
Speaker 1: and indeed in the UK we can come over to
Speaker 1: the UK in the moment. But I mean principally, we're
Speaker 1: worrying here about the big floats between dollars and Japanese yen,
Speaker 1: and that the authorities in Japan are very worried about
Speaker 1: one the yen weakening too much or indeed strengthening too much.
Speaker 1: That doesn't want to gradual That the yen is very
Speaker 1: is very cheap in relative terms of the dollar, but
Speaker 1: slowly and steadily they want that maybe it to be
Speaker 1: less so, but they want no sharp moves, so that
Speaker 1: means no shot moves and interest rates preferably and indeed
Speaker 1: in their own bond yields. So let's learne there's stock market.
Speaker 2: So this is what I'm the last August, doesn't it
Speaker 2: when we had that brief period of panic when the
Speaker 2: yen got a lot stronger, very suddenly, exactly because.
Speaker 1: That was everyone who to a big export county like Japan,
Speaker 1: they are planning forward. You know, if you're going to
Speaker 1: sell lots of toyotas, you need to know where where
Speaker 1: your FX risk is, and so everything has to be done,
Speaker 1: you know, preferably in a very calm and careful manner.
Speaker 1: So sharp moves are not appreciated, particularly by Japanese authorities,
Speaker 1: but it's because it does upset the attle cart elsewhere
Speaker 1: as well. And quite clearly, the Trump administration is in
Speaker 1: the middle of are doing trade negotiations with Japan. Japan's
Speaker 1: government isn't quite a rocky place at the moment, so
Speaker 1: the last thing they want to be seen is manipulating
Speaker 1: their currency. And as far as the US authorities are concerned,
Speaker 1: but they obviously are going to have to do a
Speaker 1: fairly important and probably painful trade deal with the US
Speaker 1: because they obviously export an awful lot. Though they're no
Speaker 1: longer happened to the world's largest credit to nation. That's
Speaker 1: that's not being handled across the journey, according to the
Speaker 1: latest Japanese Ministry of Finance details. But I mean point
Speaker 1: is that Japan sells a lot into the US. Its
Speaker 1: currency rate has been very weak. It's be very advantageous
Speaker 1: for its exporters. They don't want that to change true ratically.
Speaker 2: Because honestly, one issue with interest rate is going up
Speaker 2: is the borrowing more expensive. So I mean is we'll
Speaker 2: take this to the UK now because obviously that's where
Speaker 2: most of our listeners are living and where their mortgages
Speaker 2: are and things like that. What is the knock on
Speaker 2: impact to the UK If there is a knock on
Speaker 2: impact because obviously long boinds here are going the yields
Speaker 2: are going up to what does all of that mean
Speaker 2: for the public finances and for what's likely to happened
Speaker 2: with the bank at England rate and mortgages and things
Speaker 2: like that is.
Speaker 1: Not good news. But I mean, what we're saying in
Speaker 1: Japan is very similar to what we're seeing in the UK.
Speaker 1: We had the scare with the sort of lit trust instance,
Speaker 1: which was really more down to pension funds and the
Speaker 1: bond buying strategies called liability driven investing. I'm going to
Speaker 1: the money.
Speaker 2: Thank you, because I've gone into that a number of
Speaker 2: times on this podcast, and you're one of the few
Speaker 2: people that actually confirms that that is what it was,
Speaker 2: so expert here the.
Speaker 1: Bank of Anything confirmed themselves two thirds of it was
Speaker 1: down to LDR.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: However, the point is is that the scare that which
Speaker 1: she had around that time October twenty twenty two, three
Speaker 1: years ago, has not really been how should we say, learnt,
Speaker 1: And now we're finally seeing the knock on effect in Japan,
Speaker 1: much much bigger than the market in the UK. But
Speaker 1: it's the same basic problem. There are not enough domestic
Speaker 1: long only pension fund slash insurer buyers who naturally want
Speaker 1: very long data accets to match against the liabilities. There
Speaker 1: aren't enough buyers in the UK either, because we have
Speaker 1: our own Manu shy Of as you know, of defined
Speaker 1: benefit pensions, and the requirements to that is dropping because
Speaker 1: a lot of getting closed. The LDI type of buying
Speaker 1: is disappearing at the same time as we just got structurally,
Speaker 1: you know the demographics, but people are not living as
Speaker 1: long there is less demand for very long dated debt.
Speaker 1: The Debt Management Officer of the UK Treasury has done
Speaker 1: a lot to try and get ahead of this, but
Speaker 1: it's evident that they need to do even more. I
Speaker 1: sell less long bonds exactly is what perhaps is happening
Speaker 1: in Japan. This is just a very similar thing. It's
Speaker 1: a structural domestic demand from the big institutions in both
Speaker 1: the UK, Japan and the US is radically reduced. The
Speaker 1: US Treasury is sort of getting ahead of it in
Speaker 1: two ways. One, they're ishing a lot more tea bills,
Speaker 1: which we don't really do in the UK and perhaps
Speaker 1: we ought to do more of.
Speaker 2: Just clearly, tea bells are basically just cash.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're very short money market instruments which don't offer
Speaker 1: a coupon, but they are issued below one hundred, say
Speaker 1: at ninety nine or ninety eight, and they're mature at
Speaker 1: one hundred, so you get your money back by holding
Speaker 1: it to maturity, and you get back more than you
Speaker 1: put in. So you know, this is short data funding,
Speaker 1: which is you know, obviously banks are very very important
Speaker 1: in it, but you know, we don't do as much
Speaker 1: in the UK as perhaps other countries do. The other
Speaker 1: thing that US are doing is that the Federal Reserve
Speaker 1: has stopped basically all all their US Treasury quantitative timing passively.
Speaker 1: They are buying something like five billion a month, but
Speaker 1: you know, they're hardly doing anything. So in that sense,
Speaker 1: it's not you know, as prevalent a supply demand issue
Speaker 1: maybe in the US by what's going on with the
Speaker 1: Trump administration. And indeed, what the Federal Reserve is basically saying,
Speaker 1: which is we're not going to cut interest rates very much.
Speaker 2: But basically the fad has stopped sale and poins to
Speaker 2: stop pail jungers, they stop.
Speaker 1: Reducing their balanchine quiet they are quite as much as
Speaker 1: clearly the Bank of are still doing in this country.
Speaker 1: And we've got the highest first year you know yields
Speaker 1: of all you know, we're five and a half percent.
Speaker 1: And then that's that's you know, costing us, and it
Speaker 1: costs our financing and our interest rate bill each each
Speaker 1: year is higher and higher, and that's just obviously causing
Speaker 1: extreme problems onto Rachel Reeves's fiscal headroom or lack thereof.
Speaker 1: And yeah, we are not helping ourselves at the moment.
Speaker 1: But you know, basically, lusts like Japan we've got less
Speaker 1: demand for very long dated bonds, perhaps we should sell
Speaker 1: even less of them for the moment anyway, So does that.
Speaker 2: Mean presumably the idea would be we stop selling as
Speaker 2: many long dety points and we start selling more short
Speaker 2: detied ones sly two five to ten years. Yes, But
Speaker 2: my question then is doesn't increase in supply at that
Speaker 2: and then push up interest at that end as well,
Speaker 2: or they also be.
Speaker 1: An equal there's a lot more liquidity to much bigger market.
Speaker 1: It's much more you know, you have a lot more
Speaker 1: foreign interest, particularly foreign central banks don't tend to go
Speaker 1: out beyond ten years, and obviously a lot shorter Equally
Speaker 1: hedge funds which are very active, but in beyond sort
Speaker 1: of the ten to fifteen year that they're gonna be
Speaker 1: very much any relative value buying and certing strategies, you know,
Speaker 1: doing sort of complex trades, but in the net exposure
Speaker 1: they have will be very limited. So it's really a
Speaker 1: very domestic market out beyond ten or fifteen years. In
Speaker 1: the UK totally dominated it for many many years by
Speaker 1: pension funds and insurers, and these guys have got enough
Speaker 1: at the moment. So as I said that, don't Manager
Speaker 1: Office has done a fantastic job up to now. However,
Speaker 1: they perhaps need to be even more or the Treasury
Speaker 1: needs to make come up with an even more aggressive
Speaker 1: way of changing how we find. We find a lot
Speaker 1: of very long dated and very much inflation linked bonds
Speaker 1: in the last twenty thirty years, it's been fabulous for us. However,
Speaker 1: the situation has changed and this is not where we
Speaker 1: perhaps have natural demand which maybe go to some more
Speaker 1: traditional and like a lot of more other bond markets,
Speaker 1: an issue much more in the two to tenure sector,
Speaker 1: like the US Treasury does.
Speaker 2: Final question on this, But given all of this, what
Speaker 2: do you think that actually does mean for the interest
Speaker 2: rates that marld to you know, people putting us evingsway
Speaker 2: and people taking the morgidgees. I mean because you know
Speaker 2: where at the start of this year this sort of
Speaker 2: Bank England, the were people thinking, oh, you know, we
Speaker 2: may have fee and a half percent by the end
Speaker 2: of the year. Are but that would be like that
Speaker 2: would be the same really has become an inflation rate
Speaker 2: pretty much and that strikes me as a bit and
Speaker 2: lately note but I don't know what viewing that well.
Speaker 1: We haven't helped ourselves by you know, raising the minimum wage,
Speaker 1: raising a lot of public sector wage rises, and obviously
Speaker 1: huge tax hikes you know, national insurance contribution to employers
Speaker 1: and things like that which have forced a lot of
Speaker 1: things higher. We do have you know, a bump at
Speaker 1: the moment because of energy prices which will go away,
Speaker 1: and there's a number of things which would would lead
Speaker 1: to you think that probably over the course of the
Speaker 1: next six months a year, that inflation will come back
Speaker 1: down again. Nonetheless, you know, really the Bank of England
Speaker 1: is of the opinion at the moment that doesn't do
Speaker 1: anything until it's absolutely proven that that they have got
Speaker 1: on top of inflation, and they are clearly more worried
Speaker 1: about it than perhaps a lot of in the market
Speaker 1: had thought, because we expect the economy to be pretty
Speaker 1: soft now as we know. The first was strong optically
Speaker 1: because a lot of inventory build ahead of obviously the tariffs.
Speaker 1: That's not necessarily going to last very long. So growth
Speaker 1: for the rest of the year in the UK is
Speaker 1: probably not going to be that great. If it's any
Speaker 1: weaker than the Bank of unexpects, then maybe we'll see
Speaker 1: the Bank of It be a little bit more aggressive
Speaker 1: on rate cuts. But They really want to see two things.
Speaker 1: Evident economic weakness, of which we're not really seeing at
Speaker 1: the moment. That there are some worries in the labor markets.
Speaker 1: It's obviously the statistics. We got quality of them as parlors,
Speaker 1: so we don't really have much visibility on that. And
Speaker 1: they're not taking your risk until they feel they've got
Speaker 1: controversial evidence that we're in recession or something like that,
Speaker 1: and until they're seeing inflation. You know, I actually properly
Speaker 1: turned the corner and go back down again towards at least,
Speaker 1: you know, evidently back towards the two percent target. Anything
Speaker 1: above three three and a half percent, which you're sort
Speaker 1: of seeing the moment is you know, no go for them.
Speaker 1: They're not going to tighten or raise interest rates, but
Speaker 1: they're not going to rush too. So you know, we
Speaker 1: might get one in August, but that's looking like a
Speaker 1: coin flip, so we may get another one before the
Speaker 1: end of the year. But you know, look, I never
Speaker 1: would have thought this, but there is a possibility we
Speaker 1: may have got nothing until until next year. But as
Speaker 1: I said, unless we get some further clarity both on
Speaker 1: inflation indeed on how the economy is faring, I don't
Speaker 1: think the Bank of England is gonna be our friend here.
Speaker 2: It really is great. Well, thank you very much Marcus.
Speaker 2: As always, that was extremely enlightening and much very much
Speaker 2: pre city coming on.
Speaker 1: Well job, Thanks very much you for having me. Was
Speaker 1: enjoy it.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to this week's Melton Talks Money Debrief.
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Speaker 2: This episode was produced by Moses and Summer Sadi and
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