Those are good questions and I think they confused even some professional trader recently.
1. Over the last decade we have found out that the Fed cannot reliably control long-term interest rates with their overnight rate policy. In fact, when the Fed tightens, the market starts projecting lower inflation and slower economic growth for years in the future. Thus, long-dated rates often don’t move or move lower early in the hiking cycle.
2. By carry I mean the difference between the yield on the bond and the rate at which a leveraged trader can borrow money overnight, using the bond as a collateral. In the current rate this borrowing (funding) rate for treasury bonds is virtually zero. If the Fed were to start raising rates, the funding cost would go up, making the carry trade less profitable.
CIO, HonTe Investments. Ran global macro at JPM. Yahoo! Finance Contributor. Ph.D. in Mathematics. Author, The Next Perfect Trade. No investment advice.
