Markets To Watch This Week: US Bonds and Japanese Yen
- By Bilal Hafeez
- 1 min read
So many different markets are experiencing large moves that it’s hard to keep track. Therefore, we are launching this new report that tracks which markets have moved the most over the past week. In order to allow comparisons across markets, we look at moves in terms of standard deviations. Put simply, we see whether last week’s move in a given market was a 1 standard deviation move, a 2 standard deviation move or something smaller.
Bitcoin entered the mainstream in 2020, with traditional institutional investors finally allocating to it. The year also saw new funds and ETFs emerge as vehicles for these investors to get exposure.
Perhaps the largest is the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, with over $27bn in assets. It invests solely in bitcoin, and so many investors, notably institutional, who cannot hold bitcoin directly can get exposure through investing in Grayscale. Consequently, if the trust trades at a premium to bitcoin prices, it may imply ‘excess’ demand from institutions, but ‘excess’ supply if it trades at a discount. At the start of the year, it traded at a large premium, suggesting significant institutional interest. But since March, it has flipped to a discount that has continued to today (Chart 1). This suggests less support for bitcoin.
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So many different markets are experiencing large moves that it’s hard to keep track. Therefore, we are launching this new report that tracks which markets have moved the most over the past week. In order to allow comparisons across markets, we look at moves in terms of standard deviations. Put simply, we see whether last week’s move in a given market was a 1 standard deviation move, a 2 standard deviation move or something smaller.
- Looking at last week, we find that six markets experienced a move greater than one standard deviation.
- The biggest was US 10y bond yields which saw a 2.1 standard deviation move, followed closely by UK 10y yields (Chart 1). Meanwhile, the Japanese yen (JPY) fell 1.6 standard deviations.
- Other markets that experienced more than one standard deviation (st. dev.). weekly moves were German 10 yields (+1.4 st. dev), Japan 10y yields (+1.2 st. dev.), Bitcoin (+1.2 st. dev) and the Nikkei (-1 st.dev.)
We will therefore closely follow these markets this week, notably US 10 yields and USD/JPY (Charts 2 and 3).
Bilal Hafeez is the CEO and Editor of Macro Hive. He spent over twenty years doing research at big banks – JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, and Nomura, where he had various “Global Head” roles and did FX, rates and cross-markets research.