The blog’s 6 monthly survey of major stock markets, now including the US 30 year Treasury bond, shows mixed performance since March:
• The worst performers have been Shanghai and Tokyo, down ~12%. They are also the worst performers since the pre-Crisis peak, down ~50%.
• In the middle are the US, UK, Russia and Brazil, down ~2%. Since the peak, Brazil is down 9%, UK down 18%, US down 29% and Russia down 40%.
• The positive performers are Germany, up 6%; India up 11%; and the US 30 year Treasury bond, up 15%. Since the peak, however, Germany is still down 23% and India down 10%, but the Treasury bond is up 20%.
Whilst there is a lot of talk about a bond market bubble, as discussed recently in Questions to the chemical market genie, there are also a number of quite rational reasons why investors might focus on long-dated bonds issued by major governments.
Monday’s Financial Times will feature the blog’s analysis of this issue.