US yields have clearly shifted over the past 6 months or so. The move is justified – stronger global growth, a large fiscal package and a pickup in inflation. At this juncture, where do things stand? Interest rate futures are still pricing a hiking cycle a ways under the Fed projections. There’s about 100bps priced between here and December 2019. Not a high bar – we could reasonably have that this year, hiking once per quarter. To our eye, the measured and linear pace priced by markets is going to have to contend with economic activity that may be decidedly nonlinear. We just don’t know what happens when you slash corporate and personal taxes at very low levels of unemployment, pour on an infrastructure package at the same time, and see a pickup in global growth. Are retail sales linear when every paycheck in the country gets a big boost? Are capex plans linear when corporate taxes get markedly reduced and regulatory burdens reverse? Are wages linear at 4.1% unemployment? Is the impact of a reduced Fed balance sheet – particularly in mortgages – and an ECB that’s edging toward the door linear on term premium? How about corporate holdings of bonds under a new and drastically different tax regime? Or are these things convex? We may find out soon. It didn’t make sense that interest rate volatility was so low – it is all about the convex tails.

FOMC member interest rate projections and market pricing implied interest rate path.      SOURCE: Bloomberg