The chart below shows the 3 prices series – the US 5 year yield, the US Dollar-Japanese Yen exchange rate and the price of gold – inverted here. Each of these markets have their own fundamental drivers, but for periods of time they can share the same set of dominant factors that determine price action. A story gets built around them that sounds compelling, and correlations become self-fulfilling…for a while. In previous years, these markets have been a popular way to trade interest rate views, but the recent divergence is fascinating. It’s a good example on the importance of focusing on the areas closest to home when taking macro bets, rather than being lulled into related markets that may be correlated at the time. If those correlations change, you can be right on the view, but wrong in the implementation. That’s no fun for anyone.

The narrative around each is decently intuitive – if you thought yields would go up, positioning in the currency markets where interest rate differentials are often dominant drivers makes sense. Nowhere is this more true than in Yen, which has arguably the most extreme form of easing in yield curve control, pegging the 10 year JGB around zero. Further, Japan appears to be the furthest major economy from tightening. This made sense for a while – as you can see in the run up to the US election and the reactions afterwards, perfectly fine way to play it. The gold view was also fairly compelling – low rates would lead to inflation, which gold is a great hedge against (not that we agree, but that was the view). So higher rates, particularly real rates, would push gold down. Again, in the run up to, and coming out of the election, this was an OK way to position. Spreading risk between the three expressions was a defensible thing to do. The second chart drums it home a different way – it shows just USDJPY and the US 5 year yield, and the 30 day correlation. That’s likely too short a window, and correlations are odd things, but it gets the point across – they correlated at 0.8 during these periods.

The recent move higher though…not so much. Gold has not fallen, and the Japanese Yen has gone the opposite way. Only the rates view worked. That 0.8 correlation went to zero on a dime. New narratives are popping up to rationalize it away and sound smart ex post – but ex ante it wasn’t clear at all. No one knows if it will continue or will revert either. Markets change and stories shift – the more things change, the more they stay the same.