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June 28, 2016 at 10:35 AM
(Bloomberg) — BlackRock Inc.’s Rick Rieder has a message for investors betting on lower rates by snapping up shorter-dated U.S. Treasuries: Brexit alone won’t put a Federal Reserve interest-rate cut in play.
Treasuries snapped a two-day rally ignited by last week’s U.K. vote to leave the European Union, which had sent two-year note yields to the lowest since October. Investors bought the securities as the market-implied probability of a rate increase by year-end dropped to 10 percent, from 50 percent the day of the referendum, while the chances of a cut jumped to 12 percent, futures data compiled by Bloomberg show.
The expectation that the Fed will lower rates is misguided, according to Rieder, the chief investment officer of global fixed income at BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager.
“The front end of the U.S. yield curve, i.e. two years, three years, has no value,” Rieder said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “To some extent, the markets have priced in a high probability that the Fed is going to cut rates. I don’t think that’s even in consideration at any time in the near future unless there’s a real crisis that manifests itself.”
U.S. policy makers are trying to raise rates even as central banks abroad maintain or boost stimulus amid concern that global economic growth is slowing. After liftoff from near zero in December, Fed officials have twice cut projections for how quickly rates will rise. Fed Chair Janet Yellen said Brexit-related risk played into the central bank’s decision not to hike earlier this month.
Yields Rebound
Treasury two-year note yields rose three basis points, or 0.03 percentage point, to 0.62 percent as of 10:50 a.m. in New York, according to Bloomberg Bond Trader data. The price of the 0.625 percent security due June 2018 was 100.
U.S. 10-year note yields climbed three basis points to 1.47 percent after falling by 31 basis points in the past two sessions. The record low is 1.379 percent, reached in 2012.
Yields climbed on German and U.K. government debt as traders favored riskier bonds and shares while they pondered what steps policy makers might take to limit the economic fallout from the British vote. Equity markets rose in the U.S. and Europe.
The world’s safest government bonds initially surged after Britons voted on June 23 to exit the largest trading bloc. That drove a rush for the relative safety of fixed-income securities and boosted the amount of global sovereign bonds with yields below zero to about $8.9 trillion.
