Prayers for a sudden return to dovish monetary policies have been answered, and now investors are living with the aftermath: a world awash with $8.6 trillion in negative-yielding debt.
That’s one reason money managers are wading once more into the fringes of fixed-income markets across the globe.
Consider the action over the past week: Past defaulter Ecuador managed to sell $1 billion in new bonds even as the government is in talks for International Monetary Fund financing. Crisis-prone Greece received blockbuster orders for its 2.5 billion-euro ($2.9 billion) sale. And the decidedly frontier republic of Uzbekistan, encouraged by risk-on markets, is meeting investors for a debut international offering.
No wonder the world’s largest funds are betting the explosive rally in developing-economy debt still has legs.
Meanwhile, U.S. high-yield is in the throes of a rebound, as traders bet easier monetary policy will prolong the business cycle. Lower-rated borrowers are in vogue after the asset class posted the biggest monthly gain in seven years.
“We’ve seen a huge psychological swing toward greed from fear in the space of a few weeks,” said Jamie Stuttard, co-head of global macro fixed-income at Robeco Group in London, who’s paring credit exposure in developed markets.
It’s a replay of the post crisis, bad-news-is-good-news investing strategy. The idea: That a dovish monetary offset to redress market and growth fears will boost risk assets.
A manufacturing slowdown in Germany and Italy’s contracting economy threaten to stymie rate liftoff in the euro zone, while the Federal Reserve last week signaled it’s done rate hiking until inflation picks up.
“Markets have shown repeatedly in the past the extent to which they can ignore economic and political reality when they feel that central bank policy is a tailwind,” said James Athey, a senior investment manager at Aberdeen Standard Investments in London. The performance of Italian government bonds “is also highly suggestive of a grab for yield. We have seen a number of EM nations of varying quality come to market and see strong demand,” he said.
The case to be tactically bullish is laid out by BNP Paribas SA: Dovish central banks are the number-one reason why the new-year rally can continue with quantitative-tightening fears on the backburner. “The market will now need to rethink the consensus late-cycle narrative," strategists led by Viktor Hjort wrote in a note.