Markets Weekly January 11, 2025

Hello, my friends. Today is January 11th and this is Markets Weekly. So we had a bout of volatility in the market today, some notable updates and down days in the equity market. But I think the real focus of the past week was the bond market, where we basically had a global bond market sell-off and that will be the focus of our discussion today. But before we continue, I'd like to note that I've added a new section on my website called Market View. So a lot of people ask me what my market views are, so I decided to share that in the form of a market view portfolio available to my subscribers. Now, this is not intended to be investment-envised, nor is it intended to be a trading portfolio, but it's just basically meant to be a portfolio that represents how I view the market and I will update it gradually. And as you can see, last week I closed a put position in the S&P 500 and my core view is bullish rates. So bullish bonds, bearish the dollar and bullish gold in no equity exposure. Okay, so today what I'm going to talk about is two things. One of course is the global bond market route and secondly, the good jobs data we got in the US and these two are related. Okay, starting with the bond market. So looking at the global bond market, we'll see that they really had a really big sell-off the past week. We focus in the US on treasuries, but it was really bad in the UK as well. And even Japan saw a rise in yields. Exception, of course, is China where yields continue to decline, but they have capital controls over there, so they're somewhat disconnected from the rest of the world. And as we all know, they're suffering some idiosyncratic problems.

你好，朋友们。今天是1月11日，欢迎收看《市场周报》。今天市场经历了一次波动，股票市场出现了一些显著的涨跌。但我认为过去一周的真正焦点在于债券市场，全球债券市场基本上经历了一次抛售，这也是我们今天讨论的重点。不过，在继续之前，我想提一下，我在我的网站上新增了一个板块，叫做“市场观点”。有很多人询问我的市场看法，所以我决定通过一个市场观点组合分享给我的订阅者。这不是投资建议，也不是交易组合，只是一个反映我对市场看法的组合，我会逐步更新。如您所见，上周我关闭了标普500的一个看空期权头寸，我的核心观点是看好利率，也就是看好债券，看空美元和看好黄金，没有股票的敞口。 今天我要谈论两件事：首先是全球债券市场的动荡，其次是美国发布的良好就业数据，这两者是相关的。先从债券市场谈起。看看全球债券市场，过去一周确实出现了大幅抛售。在美国，我们关注国债，但英国的情况也不容乐观，甚至日本也出现了收益率上升。唯一的例外是中国，那里的收益率仍在下降，因为他们有资本管制，与世界其他地区有一定的脱节。此外，我们都知道中国正在经历一些特有的问题。

So what is driving this rise in bond yields? Well, I think the first thing to realize when we approach the market is the richness of the market. And what I mean is that the market has many, many different market participants. Each have different views of the world, each have different constraints. For example, an active participant in the market is the Fed or other central banks and those guys are not even trying to make money. So this is where I think that the textbook explanations are very inadequate. I take the equity market, for example. Now, if you read a textbook, they'll tell you that equity prices are the discounted cash flow of expected future earnings. So you can try to forecast earnings, come up with a discount rate, and voila, you get some kind of sense of valuation.

那么，是什么导致债券收益率上升的呢？首先，我认为在我们进入市场时，需要意识到市场的丰富性。我的意思是，市场有非常多不同的参与者。每个参与者对世界的看法和约束条件都不同。比如，美联储或其他中央银行就是市场中的活跃参与者，他们甚至并不想赚钱。因此，我认为教科书上的解释是非常不够的。以股票市场为例，教科书可能会告诉你，股价是预期未来收益的折现现金流。因此，你可以尝试预测收益，计算一个折现率，然后就能大致了解估值。

Now, that all sounds totally reasonable. But when you look at the public markets, you'll realize that that's just not how the world works. Look at AMC or GME, for example, those stocks sometimes they surge just simply because Roaring Kitty wants to post something has nothing to do with their earnings. Or more importantly, we actually know who some of the big buyers in equity markets are. Mike Green has done a lot of good work on passive investment, and he shows that a lot of the buying in the equity market is just through on C41Ks or Target 8 funds, where an employee receives a biweekly paycheck, some of that paycheck goes into the market, and that's just money that goes into the market irrespective of what expectations for earnings are.

这听起来都很合理。但当你观察公开市场时，你会发现现实并非如此。比如AMC或GME这些股票，有时仅仅因为名为Roaring Kitty的人发了个帖子，就出现了大幅上涨，而这与公司的盈利无关。更重要的是，我们实际上知道股市中的一些大买家是谁。Mike Green对被动投资做了很多研究，他指出市场上的很多买入行为来自401K或Target日期基金。这些买入行为是员工每两周领到工资后，一部分工资自动投资于市场，而这些资金流入市场并不取决于公司盈利预期。

So it's because of this big disconnect between the market and the textbooks that I created, this free course called Market Participants to help others understand some different perspectives on what drives price action. This is of course part of my Marcus Complete Series that I created to help people understand the market because my experience of what is taught in schools is just not very useful. So moving back to the bond market, what are some common stories to explain the rise in yields? Now, a very common story that I see on social media is because the market is afraid of inflation. Now, maybe Trump is coming and maybe President Trump will spend a lot of money or something like that. And so the market is freaking out about potentially out of control inflation, why Merg Republic stuff? And so the bond market is freaking out. Now, that's possible. But then if you look at another traded asset tips, you can see that tips implied inflation has been pretty steady for the past few years, ranging between two and two and a half percent. We had a bit of a recession scare a few months ago, but as that scare receded, we went right back up to where the ranges are. So based on this market-based traded view of inflation expectations, there just doesn't seem to be a lot of fear of inflation in the market.

由于市场与教科书之间存在很大差距，我创建了一个名为“市场参与者”的免费课程，以帮助他人从不同的角度理解价格波动的驱动因素。这当然是我制作的“Marcus 完整系列”中的一部分，旨在帮助人们了解市场，因为我认为学校教授的内容并不太实用。现在，让我们回到债券市场，什么是解释收益率上升的一些常见说法呢？我在社交媒体上看到的一个很常见的说法是市场担心通胀。也许特朗普要上台了，可能特朗普总统将会花很多钱之类的。因此，市场可能会因为潜在的失控通胀感到恐慌，像梅根共和这样的事情，所以债券市场表现非常紧张。但这只是可能的情况。然而，如果你看一下另一种交易资产TIPS，你会发现TIPS隐含的通胀率在过去几年中一直相当稳定，大约在2%到2.5%之间。几个月前我们遇到了一点经济衰退的恐慌，但随着恐慌减退，我们又回到了原来的范围。因此，基于这种市场交易的通胀预期视角，市场似乎并没有太多对通胀的担忧。

Now, to be clear, this is not a perfect measure, but it is a measure. And I like it because it is tradable. So if you have a view that's different from it, you can take a position. Other surveys of inflation expectations like consumer surveys, you know, show some fluctuation doesn't seem like it's getting out of control. But I would note that the people who participate in these consumer inflation expectations surveys are probably not going to be trading in the market. So I don't think that they have a big impact of it.

现在，明确地说，这并不是一个完美的指标，但它仍然是一个指标。我喜欢它的原因是它是可以交易的。所以如果你有不同的看法，你可以据此采取行动。其他有关通胀预期的调查，比如消费者调查，显示出一些波动，但似乎并没有失控。但我要指出的是，参与这些消费者通胀预期调查的人可能并不会在市场上进行交易。因此，我认为他们对市场的影响不大。

Now, there's some interesting survey evidence that suggests that there is a strong partisan tilt to inflation expectations, whereas if you are, if you supported the president, you think inflation is going to be okay. If you did not, you're kind of freaking out. So, but again, the stuff is on the consumer level. And I don't really think it flows through into the bond market, which most people are not trading. Another possibility for higher interest for higher yields is that the market is pricing in fewer fed cuts. Now, this in my view is what is driving the rise in the 10 year yield.

现在，有一些有趣的调查证据显示，通货膨胀预期在很大程度上具有党派倾向。如果你支持总统，那么你可能认为通货膨胀不会有问题；如果你不支持，你可能就会比较担心。但是，这些主要是在消费者层面的现象，我觉得这并没有真正影响到大多数人不参与的债券市场。另一种导致收益率上升的可能性是市场预期美联储减少降息。我认为，这就是推动10年期国债收益率上升的原因。

Now, the good thing is that there's a very, very clear way to measure the market's expectation of fed policy. And that is a silver futures. So far futures, very, very deep and the good markets very actively traded. So you can be pretty confident that this is a good representation of what the market is thinking. Now, in this chart here, I show the expected path of fed policy as a Friday and a month ago. And you can see that there's been an absolute sea change in how the market is perceiving the path of policy.

现在，好消息是，我们有一个非常清晰的方法来衡量市场对美联储政策的预期，那就是通过白银期货。白银期货市场非常活跃，交易也很深入繁荣，因此我们可以相当有把握地说，这代表了市场的真实看法。在这张图表中，我展示了市场对美联储政策预期的变化轨迹，分别是在上周五和一个月前的情况。可以看到，市场对政策路径的看法发生了巨大变化。

So a month ago, the market was thinking, maybe the Fed will cut as much as to 3.8% and then gradually, gradually start hiking again. As of last Friday, the market is thinking that maybe the terminal of fed funds rate is somewhat above 4%. And then the Fed will start hiking again in 2026. And that just huge, huge change in policy expectations is, in my view, what's pushing the 10 year yield higher. Not anything to do with inflation, just that the Fed, again, is not going to cut as much.

大约一个月前，市场认为美联储可能会降息到3.8%左右，然后开始逐渐加息。但到上周五，市场的看法变成了，美联储的终端利率可能会略高于4%，并且会在2026年再次开始加息。在我看来，政策预期发生如此巨大变化正是推动10年期收益率上涨的原因。这与通货膨胀无关，而是因为美联储不会进行那么多的降息。

Now, why is the Fed not going to cut as much? One is that economy is stronger than they thought. Again, they were afraid of recession and not too long ago, they're not afraid of it now. Inflation has been stickier than they expect. And so they're cutting less. But again, that's the Fed, how the Fed views the world, not how the market views the world. If you look at tips implied break-evens, they just haven't been concerned about inflation for the past few years. So from my perspective, this is just a change in policy expectations. Oh, one other thing, of course, is the Fed came out and openly told you that they don't want to cut as much. And so the market is pricing that.

现在，为什么美联储不会大幅降息？一个原因是经济比他们预想的要强。之前，他们担心会出现衰退，但现在不再担心。通货膨胀比他们预期的更顽固，所以他们减少了降息的幅度。但这只是美联储的看法，并不是市场的看法。如果你查看通胀保值债券（TIPS）的隐含盈亏平衡率，过去几年他们并不太担心通货膨胀。所以，从我的角度来看，这只是政策预期的变化。当然，还有一个原因，美联储公开表示他们不想过多降息，所以市场也在对此进行定价。

Other potential stories for what is driving the 10 year yield higher is term premium. What is term premium? Term premium is basically the extra compensation investors require in order to hold 10 year treasuries above the expected path of Fed policy. And this is a totally reasonable story as well. Obviously, we have a very large fiscal deficit. So maybe people want a higher term premium need more risk, need more compensation to hold that risk.

其他可能推动10年期国债收益率上升的原因是期限溢价。那么什么是期限溢价呢？期限溢价基本上是指投资者为了持有超过预期美联储政策路径的10年期国债，而要求的额外补偿。这种解释也是完全合理的。显然，我们有非常大的财政赤字，所以可能投资者希望获得更高的期限溢价来承担更多风险，进而需要更多补偿来持有这种风险。

Now, whereas the concept of term premium makes total sense, it's a very difficult thing to measure. Now, there are actually studies that do meta analysis on term premium, where they take out a whole bunch of term premium models, compare their outputs. And what they find is that if you have term 10 term premium models, you end up with a very different, 10 very different term premium estimates.

现在，虽然期限溢价的概念完全合理，但其测量非常困难。实际上，有一些研究对期限溢价进行了综合分析，他们会使用很多期限溢价模型，并对它们的输出进行比较。研究发现，如果你有10个期限溢价模型，那么你会得到10个非常不同的期限溢价估算结果。

Now, if the term premium estimate is so model dependent, it's hard to see it being very useful. A very popular measure of term premium is the Adrian Crump model. That's also what people in the Fed use a lot. And you can just look at this graph of the ACM term premium over a few decades to know immediately that it's not useful.

如果期限溢价的估计如此依赖于模型，那么很难看出它的实际用途。一个非常流行的期限溢价指标是Adrian Crump模型，美联储的人也经常使用这个模型。不过，只要看看这个模型几十年来的期限溢价图表，就可以立即意识到它并不那么有用。

Why do you know it's not useful? Because it's not mean reverting. So if you, if there were many people in the market who made investment decisions, according to the ACM model, you'd expect term premium to be mean reverting. What that means is that when term premium is very high, these guys would jump in and buy the 10 year yield.

你怎么知道这没用呢？因为它不是均值回归的。所以，如果市场上有很多人根据ACM模型做出投资决策，你会预期期限溢价会是均值回归的。这意味着，当期限溢价非常高时，这些人会去购买10年期收益率。

So, so as to make the term premium mean revert to some kind of historical mean. And when the term premium is very low or even negative, you'd expect these guys to be selling the 10 year treasuries until it reverts until the term premium reverts to some kind of mean where you have more bars come in. But obviously, this is not mean reverting. It just kind of turns up and down. So, I don't think it's useful.

为了使期限溢价回归到某种历史平均值。当期限溢价非常低甚至为负时，你会期望这些人会卖出10年期国债，直到期限溢价回归到某种平均水平，有更多买家进入市场。但显然，这并不是真正的均值回归，它只是上下波动。所以，我觉得这并不有用。

A more useful measure of term premium is swap spreads. Now, swaps are the tradable market's expectation of what a Fed policy would be over a period of years. And what you see is that the spread between treasuries and swaps and swaps has been winding over the past several months. So that does suggest some degree of term premium, but overall, it's, it's quite small. And part of it also has to do with regulatory constraints as well.

一个更有用的期限溢价衡量方法是掉期利差。掉期是可交易市场对美联储未来几年政策的预期。你可以看到，国债与掉期之间的利差在过去几个月中有所扩大。这确实表明存在一定程度的期限溢价，但总体来看，这个溢价相当小。这部分也与监管限制有关。

Taking a step back, looking at the totality of all this evidence, to me, it suggests that by far the biggest driver of the rise in junior yields is the path of Fed policy. And you can make an argument that there has been somewhat higher term premium, somewhat higher inflation expectations, but those are just not that important.

退一步来看，综合所有这些证据，对我来说，这表明初级收益率上升的最大推动力是美联储政策的走向。你可以说期限溢价和通胀预期略有上涨，但这些因素并不是那么重要。

A related interesting thing is that so because the bond market is global, obviously, if you have, say, treasuries in the US dollars at 4.75%, while we be buying something yielding less in another currency. So what's been happening in the treasury market has been pulling up global bond yields, whereas you can see there's a very tight relationship with UK guilds and treasury bonds, for example, as treasury yields have gone up, UK guilds have gone up as well.

一个相关的有趣现象是，由于债券市场是全球性的，显然如果美国的国债收益率是4.75%，那么我们为什么要购买以其他货币计价、收益更低的债券呢？因此，美国国债市场的变化导致了全球债券收益率的上升。例如，你可以看到英国金边债券和美国国债之间关系非常紧密，当美国国债收益率上升时，英国金边债券的收益率也随之上升。

So it seems like the, the sell off in the treasury market is really pulling up global yields, which is really bad news for a lot of them because their economies aren't just not as strong as the US economy at the moment. So whereas the Fed is setting policy in the US looking at stronger than expected US growth, stick your US inflation, and that is pushing up US yields.

看起来，国债市场的抛售正在拉高全球收益率，这对许多国家来说真是个坏消息，因为它们的经济目前并没有美国强劲。因此，虽然美联储依据强于预期的美国经济增长和持续的美国通胀在制定政策，但这却推高了美国的收益率。

US yields are in turn, dragging up global yields, and that's going to put a lot of downward pressure on foreign economies. So that's something to pay attention to going forward. There are other narratives that focusing on the UK, talking about things like if fiscal crises and so forth, maybe there's a little bit of it, but I think the more the clear explanation is just that treasuries are rising and causing a global bond sell off.

美国收益率的上升同时推高了全球收益率，这将对外国经济施加很大的下行压力。这是未来需要关注的一个问题。还有一些其他的说法关注英国，比如财政危机等，可能也有一点影响，但我认为更明确的解释是，美国国债收益率的上升引发了全球债券市场的抛售。

Okay, and the next thing I want to talk about is related and that is the strong with unexpected strength in the US labor market. So on Friday, we got the all important non-forms payroll report and its headline job creation number just kind of blew expectations out of the water. We created 250,000 jobs last month, much, much higher than expectations.

好的，接下来我想谈论的事情与此相关，那就是美国就业市场出乎意料的强劲表现。上周五，我们收到了备受关注的非农就业报告，其主要的新增就业数字远远超出了预期。上个月我们创造了25万个就业岗位，这比预期要高出很多很多。

Now, as we usually do, we have to also look into the details and the details were pretty good as well. Now, first off, looking at average hourly earnings, tick down a bit. So you could think of that as somewhat some degree of weakness, but when in the context of inflation, that's good news because lower wage growth suggests downward pressure on services related inflation.

现在，像往常一样，我们也要研究一下细节，而细节也相当不错。首先，观察平均每小时工资，略有下降。你可以将这视为某种程度的疲软，但在通货膨胀的背景下，这却是个好消息，因为工资增长放缓意味着与服务相关的通胀压力减小。

But the other really big news was the unemployment rate, which ticked down to 4.1%. Now, that is a number that the Fed is focusing on a lot, right? Fed has become more focused on the unemployment rate, its other mandate. And with that, ticking down to 4.1%, the market is thinking that the Fed is probably not going to have to cut as much and you see that immediately in the big bond sell off right after the print.

但另一个非常重大的消息是失业率下降到了4.1%。现在，这是一个美联储非常关注的数字，对吧？美联储已经更加关注失业率，因为这是他们的另一项任务。随着失业率降至4.1%，市场认为美联储可能不需要大幅度降息，您可以从数据公布后紧随其来的大量债券抛售中立即看到这一点。

Now, looking at the labor force participation, that was pretty steady as well. Now, in addition to the non-forms payroll report, last week, we also had a couple other employment related data. We have the Joltz report that had a surprisingly higher than expected amount of job openings. But when you look at it as job openings to workers looking for jobs, you notice that it seems to be stabilizing at a level that's a little bit lower than what it was peri-pandemic, but stabilizing nonetheless. Looking at the ISM surveys, the employment component in the ISM services is still above 50, again, only a little bit above 50, but that's consistent with increased job growth. That is to say that services industries continue to expand headcounts. So overall, the labor market seems to be doing okay.

现在来看劳动力参与率，这个指标基本保持稳定。除了上周的非农就业报告外，还有一些其他与就业相关的数据。乔尔茨（JOLTS）报告显示，职位空缺数量比预期要高，但当相比求职者的数量来看，职位空缺似乎正在稳定在比疫情前略低的水平，不过仍然算是稳定。根据ISM调查，ISM服务业的就业指数仍然高于50，尽管只稍微高于50，但这与就业增长一致。这意味着服务行业的员工数量继续在增加。总体来看，劳动力市场的表现还算不错。

Now, if you zoom out a little bit and look at labor market data over the past year, there's this good graph from Bloomberg suggesting that it seems like job growth has stabilized and may potentially have turned a corner. Again, it's too too early to know, but right now so far, it seems that the labor market is okay. And that means that the Fed doesn't have to worry about its employment mandate. Okay, so that's all I prepared for today. Thanks so much for tuning in. And I'll be back next week for our weekly market update. See you all soon.

现在，如果你稍微放宽视角来看过去一年的劳动力市场数据，有一个来自彭博社的不错图表显示，似乎职位增长已经趋于稳定，并有可能出现转机。当然，现在下结论还为时过早，但目前看来，劳动力市场状况良好。这意味着美联储暂时无需担心就业方面的任务。好了，这就是我今天准备的全部内容。非常感谢收看。我将于下周回来进行我们每周的市场更新。很快再见！