Saturday, March 15, 2014

Gillian Tett: "In a tech bubble with a twist, the big danger is bonds"

From the Financial Times, March 13, 2014:

The more money that floods into fixed income, the more risky any reversal 
Seth Klarman, the publicity-shy manager of the $27bn Baupost hedge fund, has given investors a slap. In his quarterly investment letter, he declared capital markets are in the grip of a wild bubble.

“Any year in which the S&P jumps 32 per cent and the Nasdaq 40 per cent while corporate earnings barely increase should be a cause for concern,” he wrote, pointing to “bubbles” in bond and credit markets, and “nosebleed stock market valuations of fashionable companies like Netflix and Tesla”.

It might sound reminiscent of 1999, when “fashionable” technology stocks last soared on this scale. But there is a twist: today it is not equities but bond markets that may yet be the most significant cause of concern.
In recent years an astonishing amount of money has quietly flooded into fixed income funds, which buy corporate bonds, emerging markets bonds and mortgage debt. And as the US looks more likely to raise interest rates, creating potential losses for bondholders, the flows could reverse – creating destabilising shocks for regulators and investors alike.

Consider the numbers. Just after Mr Klarman issued his warnings, the investment research group Morningstar produced analysis that suggests US investors have put $700bn of new money into the most mainstream taxable US bond funds since 2009. Since bond prices have risen, too, the value of these funds has doubled to $2tn. That is striking. But more notable is that these inflows to fixed income have outstripped the inflows to equity funds during the 1990s tech bubble – in both absolute and relative terms....MORE
HT: Askblog
The Danger of Bond Bubbles