The End Of An Era For Bonds?

The toughest questions in investment are not those that challenge specific views, but those that challenge deep-seated assumptions. Markets exist to accommodate a range of participants with divergent views or economic interests, so it is hardly a surprise that almost any position can be justified somehow. Those who judge the position right are rewarded, while those who do not are penalised.

But that is not how the most grievous or most costly mistakes are made. Those arise when it is investors’ entire belief systems that turn out to be misplaced. LTCM is a good case in point. Clever to a man, the principals lost their business because their faith in historical relationships that had worked so well for many years turned out in practice to break down during a period of extreme market stress.

The same, on an even bigger scale, goes for central bankers who bought in, naively, to Alan Greenspan’s convenient view that bubbles in financial markets could not be identified in advance and even if they could, would prove more costly to pre-empt than to clear up after they had burst. As he confessed to Congress in October 2008, bankers’ behaviour during the crisis had revealed “a flaw in the model ... that defines how the world works”. The cost to the world of the chairman of the Federal Reserve’s faulty assumption now runs into billions.

Are we now approaching the point with Government bonds where the assumptions that have carried this once derided instrument triumphantly through three decades of consistently good returns need to be discarded? If we are not there already, we are surely not that far away. A recent report by Andrew Smithers posed the question bluntly: “ Bonds – Government and Corporate, Nominal and Real – Why Should Anyone Hold Them?”

His argument is that at current levels Government bonds are “seriously overpriced” and therefore high risk. Returns are likely to be negative in the short term as the twin props of quantitative easing and bank window-dressing are withdrawn. Yields on inflation-linked bonds meanwhile have been driven so low by investors seeking insurance against a resurgence of inflation that, in his view, they are set to do badly whether or not inflation picks up.

Dimson, Marsh and Staunton are just as blunt in their latest Global Investment Returns Yearbook. They note that in defiance of financial theory, over the 40 years to the end of 2008 government bonds outperformed equities. Their world bond index produced an annualised real return of 4.89% between 1969 and 2008, compared with an annualised real return of 4.02% for equities. The long run real historical return from government bonds since 1900, in contrast, a period that incorporates the full gamut of human experience, including two world wars, has been just 1.0% per annum.

It is true that the anomaly of bonds outperforming equities over long periods has reversed after last year’s equity market revival, but it remains the case, the professors note, that “in an apparent violation of the law of risk and return” (than which nothing of course is more offensive to the academic mind), bonds have “produced equity-like performance, with annualised returns just a little below those on stocks, yet at much lower volatility”. Extrapolating these high returns in the future would, they conclude, “be fantasy”.

They are right about that. With 10-year yields at 3.8% in the United States and 4.0% in the UK, to project a 4.0% annualised real rate of return from Government bonds at these levels only makes sense if the world is heading for outright deflation, a fast receding possibility. Even if that were to happen, the boost to bond returns would at best be a transitory one.

In fact, from a valuation perspective it is hard to construct a plausible world economic scenario which would validate buying Government bonds today other than as a short term tactic. It is true that bonds were one of the few asset classes to display diversification value during the global financial crisis. Diversification remains the other prop, besides disinflation, on which investors’ faith in Government bonds rests.

But even this, an article of faith for entire generations of investors, is open to challenge. For Mr Smithers, the argument cuts little ice. As an instrument of diversification, cash shapes up at least as well as bonds, notwithstanding the current miserly returns on short term deposits. The huge supply overhang that is implicit in the ballooning fiscal deficits in the US, Europe and the UK meanwhile seems sure to drive yields higher. When is a only matter of time and degree.

It is not that investors who buy bonds today cannot experience one last hurrah before the 30-year cycle turns for good. There will always be opportunities to play the yield curve (now much steeper than its historical average) for profit. The message is rather that the returns of the last 30 years on which many market participants’ investment philosophy is based cannot and will not be repeated over the next 30, with all the implications that must flow from that statement.

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The Argument For Long Bonds

One phrase of Professor Paul Samuleson’s that has stuck in my mind for 20 years was his exhortation that investors should always “work the other side of the street”, the idea being that you are more likely to find value in testing non-consensual views as in accepting conventional thinking at its face value. Given that the remarkable feature of financial markets at present is how quickly consensus thinking seems to switch from one extreme view to another, the mental gymnastics required to do as he suggests have become increasingly demanding.

But the need for such challenge remains, with the inflation-deflation debate the most important current issue. In little more than a year, market prices suggest that we have moved from fear of inflation to fear of savage deflation – and now back again. True, it is not easy to gauge where consensus thinking genuinely now lies on this subject, as short covering by frustrated bears surely accounts for a good deal of the force behind the equity market’s recent strength.

My impression is that the majority of market participants remain unconvinced by the argument that inflation is once again the main enemy. There is no denying however that sentiment to that effect is gaining momentum. Most of the professional investors whose judgement I rate highly are now acting in the belief that the inflation, not deflation, camp is the right place to belong. The belief that deflation has been licked is one of the factors that has been driving equity markets higher.

In such circumstances, the need to stand back and look at the other side of the argument is greater than ever. The bond market is one obvious place to look. Peter Geikie Cobb, who co-manages Thames River Capital’s Global Bond fund (up a handsome 36% last year), gave me a powerful corrective opinion last week. His view is that there is simply no convincing evidence that inflation is rearing its head, or will do so any time soon. So firm is this conviction that his fund’s largest position by far is now in the longest duration UK gilt you can find, namely the 4.25% 2055 issue, currently yielding 4.5%. He and Paul Thursby, his co-manager, have never, it seems, owned such a long duration government bond portfolio as they do today.

The argument for such an apparently high risk stance, in essence, is that even if renewed inflation is eventually on its way, to bet on such an outcome today is distinctly premature. The only way that the US and UK economies can redeem their spiralling debt burden in the short term is through a rapid increase in the savings rate. That is already happening, but many investors may be underestimating how far and fast that process needs to unfold. Past experience suggests it will be dramatic.

In Thames River Capital’s view, with prices still falling, it is likely to be several years before we see reported inflation rising above 0%, which is why they see real yields of 4% or more at the long end of the curve as attractive. While it is evident that quantitative easing will hold down shorter dated yields in the government bond market, there is no doubt that the prices of longer dated issues do look, in general, more appealing. Although TIPs appear better value, real yields on index-linked gilts are too low to generate much current interest.

Given the unprecedented reflationary efforts now under way, some will argue that the 20-year bull market in government bonds must already be approaching its end. The charts still tell a somewhat different story. Measured against their 20-year history, yields for 10-year benchmark gilts, at 3.5%, are still firmly in the middle of the down-trending channel they have followed over the whole of those two decades. If the tipping point is coming, in other words, it has certainly not yet arrived, let alone confirmed.

So while government bonds as a class seem distinctly unattractive to those of us who expect higher inflation, the more you look at it, the case for the long bond play, whether you regard it as a hedge or as a trade, looks not unreasonable. To put it another way, even if you are concerned about inflation, it may be the least worst option available in Government bonds.

Notable too is another of the Thames River Capital team’s current convictions, which is that sterling’s renewed has further to run. Their argument is that the eurozone has still to take the punishment that sterling has had over the past few months and that the pound could well go to $1.65/$1.70 to the dollar and 1.25/$1.30 to the euro before its current bout of strength is done. Even if sterling loses its AAA status, as is certainly possible, most other currencies will be suffering just as much, if not more.

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An Anomaly In The Long Bond Market?

Long term government bond yields look very attractive, according to the managers of the Thames River Capital Global Bond Fund, Paul Thursby and Peter Geikie-Cobb. The biggest positions in their popular fund, up 34% in last year’s exceptional conditions, are in the longest dated UK gilts and US Treasuries, the former currently yielding 4.5%. This looks very tempting, given that, even if (like me) you are a believer that inflation will eventually return as a result of unprecedented Government and central bank activity, published inflation figures are not going to be positive for a long time yet. The real yield on long-dated government bonds looks a bargain therefore, though nobody in their right minds would voluntarily think of lending money to the UK government at shorter-dated rates.

I find this argument convincing, and have added some of these gilts to my own portfolio. Whether it turns out to be a hedge or a trade remains to be seen. (I will not be around to hold these instruments to maturity, alas). Sterling will also continue to strengthen, the Thames River Capital team thinks, and could well reach $1.70 and 1.30 to the euro before it is done. The euro looks most at risk. The two Thames River bond managers have never held such a long duration government bond portfolio as they do today, despite nearly 20 years investing in the field. They are also fully hedged back into sterling.


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The Message from Corporate Bond Yields

Peter Bernstein, the New York economist, puts his finger on a challenge facing all investors today: what to make of the choice between corporate bonds and Government bonds? The difference in yields between the two clases of bonds is wider than at any time in our lifetimes. The spread between the two is several standard deviations above historical experience. What is more, the yields on corporates and Treasuries are moving in opposite directions, something which has rarely if ever happened before.

Peter thinks that this relationship is "fundamentally unstable" and must change, as do I. Of the two types of bond, it seems fairly obvious which looks the better bet. If you believe that we heading for a sustained period of debt deflation, you can just about make a case for owning Government bonds even at today's extremely low yields. The 10-year US Treasury bond at 2.69%, notes Peter, is the lowest it has been since 1956. It does not look an attractive long term rate at which to lend money to a massively indebted Government.

But here is the sting in the tail. If we get an outcome as bad as sustained debt deflation, it would not take long for the perceived security of Government bonds to vanish. As Peter explains: "Ultimately the national debt depends upon the economy of the nation itself, which produces the tax revenues necessary to service the debt. The nation's economy is what keeps Treasury debt from turning into a Ponzi scheme. In short government debt is riskless only when the nation's economy is prosperous". (Source: Economics and Portfolio Strategy; a subscriber publication).

Meanwhile the case for corporate bonds rests on the fact that a catastrophically bad economy and unprecedented default rates are already priced in at today's yields. Of course investors will need to pick their corporate bonds with care to reduce the risk of default. As a class however, corporate bonds clearly have the edge over Government bonds. The only question now is how long it will take the investment community, prodded by the Federal Reserve's zero interest rate policy, to realise the same thing.

Not long, I suspect.
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