Bulls and Bears Both Gaining Ground

The continued climb in global stocks this year is being accompanied by rallies in safe-haven assets such as gold and bonds, according to a recent Bloomberg article.

“There are plenty of reasons being cautious is paying off,” the article says, such as “politics in Washington is fractured, tension on the Korean peninsula is rising and worries have revived about low U.S. inflation.” But these factors aren’t impeding gains for “equity bulls,” the article says, “who have driven up the value of stocks worldwide by more than $10 trillion in the past year.”

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According to Bloomberg, equity prices are reflecting “the benefit of the doubt being given t a rosier global outlook,” while bolstered fixed-income returns are partially due to “the lack of American price gains.”

But according to Shyam Rajan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s head of U.S. rates strategy in New York, “At the end of the day, bonds and stocks can’t keep this up.” He argues that either stocks need a correction to the tune of 30 percent, or “you’ll see bond yields 50 percent higher as the imbalance between the two asset classes recedes.”