Inflation in the U.S. is likely to come back slowly, keeping the Federal Reserve from raising interest rates for an extended period, according to the chief executive officer of Pacific Investment Management Co.
Over the next couple of years, prices are likely to increase to the 2.3% to 2.4% level, Emmanuel “Manny” Roman said Tuesday at the Bloomberg Invest Global virtual event. The central bank has learned its lesson from past interest rate increases and won’t want to risk another market “tantrum,” he said.
“The days of inflation we remember are gone,” Roman said. “We don’t think the Fed is going to raise rates for a very long time.”
Led by the Fed, central banks have been cutting interest rates and buying securities to combat the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, an intervention that helped stabilize global markets. Even as U.S. unemployment soared to its highest level in decades, stock markets have recovered most of their recent losses and corporate debt investors have poured money into junk bonds.
“You can make the argument that the signaling is actually more important than the actual amount that they buy,” Roman said of the Fed’s intervention.
U.S. equities rose to a two-week high Tuesday amid a report that President Donald Trump supports sending another round of checks to Americans and data that showed manufacturing is nearing expansion.
Pimco, with about $1.8 trillion in mostly fixed-income assets under management, is raising at least $6 billion for distressed credit and other corporate debt opportunities to take advantage of dislocations driven by the virus crisis. It’s also looking to return as an originator of collateralized loan obligations for the first time since 2006, eyeing prospects for charging higher interest rates and stricter underwriting standards than pre-pandemic issues.
Rivals such as Howard Marks’s Oaktree Capital Group also have launched new long-term funds to seize underpriced assets that feature multi-year lockups to allow the investments to regain value.