Rudderow, who invests in macro, trend following and value strategies, is staying a safe distance from companies coveted for their consistent payouts when rates are low because of their soaring premiums. “It’s created this huge bubble -- it’s the only way to describe it,” he said.

Treasury gains and gyrations in yield curves -- fueled by bets on Federal Reserve easing -- have spurred violent stock rotations this year. And back again during bond sell-offs. In September there was a once-in-a-decade equity shift in favor of value over momentum -- a trial run of what could ensue should rates rebound sharply on better economic growth.

And the case for 2020 reflation is gaining momentum. Manufacturing surveys are showing some green shoots, American job growth just trounced expectations, and a phase-one U.S.-China trade deal could be in the offing.

Investors who dissect stocks by their traits known as factors typically don’t time their strategies to ride cyclical shifts in economic data or interest rates. Alessio de Longis at Invesco Ltd. does.

His quant models flashed a shift in the economic cycle after bond yields appeared to have found a bottom in the fall. It’s prompted a more risk-on allocation, favoring value and small caps at the expense of low-volatility shares as well as momentum strategies which have had a defensive bias. The Invesco Russell 1000 Dynamic Multifactor ETF has outperformed the benchmark by 5 percentage points this year.

That higher bond yields have spurred a more risk-on rotation of late is no “coincidence,” de Longis said in an interview.

Overall the interest-rate cycle is proving something of a foe for most other active systematic managers, especially the market-neutral crowd. They’re on course for another year to forget. Figuring out why is far from easy, but Joseph Mezrich at Nomura Instinet LLC proffers one theory from the quant data he’s been tracking all year.

As yields plunged, factor styles have been increasingly influencing each other, making it harder for investors to diversify their risk, according to the strategist. “The fortunes of factor investors, who rely on the diversification benefits of factors, are affected by changes in the level of the 10-year yield,” he wrote in a note.

That correlation challenge is one reason why Sanford C. Bernstein reckons quant and fundamental funds will probably see returns near the bottom of their decade range over the coming year. Their estimates are based on a model that considers how much stocks and factors are moving together and the dispersion in returns.

The good news is that bond mania is proving a boon for strategies that jumped on the bandwagon.