(Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS). and bond titan Pacific Investment Management Co. have a simple message for Treasuries traders fretting over inflation: Relax.
The firms estimate that bond traders who are pricing in annual inflation approaching 3% over the next handful of years are overstating the pressures bubbling up as the U.S. economy rebounds from the pandemic.
Add to that certain technical distortions in the way market-based inflation expectations are priced, and Goldman Sachs, for one, says the overshoot could be as large as 0.2-to-0.3 percentage point. That gap makes a difference with key market proxies of inflation expectations surging to the highest in more than a decade for shorter maturities.
There’s at least one market metric that backs up the view that the pressures aren’t so out of hand and may even prove temporary. A swaps instrument that reflects the annual inflation rate for the second half of the next decade has been relatively stable in recent months.
The debate over inflation is crucial as policy makers and investors navigate the recovery from the pandemic. The Federal Reserve has been hammering home that it sees any spike in price pressures as likely short-lived, and that it’s willing to let inflation run above target for a period as the economy revives. Now it appears to be catching a break with its campaign. Not only are the likes of Goldman and Pimco laying out the case for a more benign inflation outlook, but traders have also trimmed bets on rate hikes by the end of 2023, even in the face of robust economic data.
“We do not see the sort of inflationary pressures that markets appear to be fearing, and high growth rates will not necessarily translate into a higher inflation rate,” said Praveen Korapaty, Goldman’s chief interest-rate strategist.
Market measures known as breakeven rates, which are derived in part from Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities and represent expectations for annual increases in consumer prices, surged anew this week as the reopening of major industrial economies progressed.
Commodities Link
Inflation worries have been mounting against a backdrop of soaring commodities prices -- copper, for example, is near a record high. It’s all happening as lawmakers in Washington debate another massive fiscal-stimulus package.
But it’s worth noting that two-year breakevens -- which reached an almost 13-year high close to 2.9% on Wednesday -- are firmly above where traders see inflation expectations in the second half of the coming decade. That shows the market is positioned for price pressures to eventually ebb.
Korapaty calls the outlook for inflation “benign,” even though his firm is one of Wall Street’s most bullish forecasters on growth. His view is that the market is overly optimistic with its inflation assumptions, with the greatest mismatch to be found on the three- and five-year horizon. At roughly 2.8% and 2.7%, respectively, those rates are around 20 to 30 basis points higher than they should be, in his estimate.
A measure of annual inflation that strips out food and energy costs, at 1.8% in March, could climb to as high as 2.4% to 2.5% this year, a level last seen in 2007, but the bump is likely to be brief, Korapaty says.
“If we are right and inflation readings come off, we might be tempted to fade Fed pricing and take the view that markets can push back when pricing Fed liftoff,” Korapaty said. In addition, he says, that would be the right time to sell three-year breakevens.
New Approach
The intensifying discussions around price pressures come amid unease in markets and in Washington over the extent of fiscal stimulus. On Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stirred markets by saying interest rates will likely rise as government spending swells and the economy achieves faster growth. She walked back the remarks hours later.
The Fed has signaled that it intends to keep policy ultra-loose at least through 2023. In August, it adopted a new approach that lets inflation run above 2% for longer before raising rates. The goal is to get inflation to average 2% over time, to make up for previous shortfalls. The Fed has failed to achieve that level on a consistent basis for much of the past decade.
Granted, some on Wall Street are more concerned about inflation risks. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) chief global markets strategist Marko Kolanovic is warning that some money managers face an “inflation shock” to their portfolios.
Futures are pricing in Fed liftoff in the first quarter of 2023, which is earlier than officials project. While the market’s timeframe hasn’t changed much over the past month, traders have reduced wagers on additional hikes by the end of that year. They now see a total of 75 basis points of tightening by the end of 2023, down about 15 basis points since April 1.
Amid the surge in breakevens, demand for inflation-shielded funds has picked up. Investors have poured more than $30 billion into them this year, EPFR Global data show.
TIPS Caveats
Breakevens have long carried the caveat that they can’t be taken at face value because of the illiquidity of TIPS and the risk premium that investors demand due to uncertainty over the path of inflation -- both of which lead to higher rates than would otherwise be the case.
Fed officials have developed models to account for those variables, and Pimco has followed up with its own. Its conclusion, in a nutshell, is that inflation expectations are even further below the Fed 2% target than officials assume. That means traders may need to pull back on expectations for Fed liftoff from near zero.
“We basically argued that inflation expectations are a little below where the Fed sees them” after coming in at around 1.75% as of March, the most recent reading in Pimco’s model, said Tiffany Wilding, an economist.
Moreover, she sees the recent rise in five-year, five-year forward breakevens, which strip out short-term noise like fluctuations in oil prices, as partly due to uncertainty around the inflation outlook -- as opposed to just an acceleration of expectations.
“Because we think front-end rates are pricing in a more aggressive Fed path than we believe, we do like shorter-dated nominal bonds, and think there’s value there,” she said.