US Treasuries Steady As Traders Await Delayed Economic Data

Economic

Summary:

Treasuries stalled as traders awaited a raft of delayed economic data with the potential to revive expectations for Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts.

Yields were broadly flat across most maturities mid-morning in New York Friday after falling toward their lowest levels of the week earlier in the session. The five-year rate reached 3.65%, the lowest level since Oct. 29, when the Fed cut rates for the second straight time.

Since then, expectations for a third rate cut in December have faded, with derivatives this week pricing in less than 50% chance of a move.

However bond traders are anticipating that the resumption of US government economic data, suspended during the six-week US government shutdown, may support a December cut, even as several Fed officials this week have said they're opposed to one.

"The market has priced in a weaker labor market story — not terrible but weak," said Ed Al-Hussainy, a portfolio manager at Columbia Threadneedle Investments. "Unless inflation runs away, it's difficult to take out the easing expectations."

The outlook for US economic data that weren't published during the shutdown from Oct. 1 to Nov. 12 remains unclear. Release dates haven't been announced yet, and there's been conflicting guidance on whether some reports will be missed. For example, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett Nov. 13 said the October jobs report will be released without the unemployment rate, a day after the White House said the jobs report and consumer price index for October were unlikely to be released.

Hassett also said about 60,000 job losses were possible because of the shutdown. The Fed cut interest rates in September and October in response to signs of weakness in US employment, even as inflation continues to exceed its target.

Accordingly, traders are anticipating that worsening labor-market conditions can win over the several Fed officials who've said cutting rates again in December would be a mistake. Most recently, Kansas City Fed President Jeff Schmid Friday said additional interest-rate cuts could do more to ingrain higher inflation than shore up the labor market.

In the Treasury options market, where wagers on the 10-year note's yield falling below 4% in coming weeks have piled up. The 10-year last traded below 4% on Oct. 29, before Fed Chair Jerome Powell said a December rate cut was far from certain.

Bond traders also are mindful of the potential for a pause in Fed rate cuts to hurt demand for risky assets and stoke demand for safer Treasuries, which might otherwise suffer from a Fed pause. The outlook for lower rates has helped lift US equity benchmarks to record highs in the past month, and stretched valuations for several giant technology companies have drawn warnings from investors and Wall Street CEOs.

"If you tell the markets that there will be no cuts, risk markets will unwind. So it's tough to trade from the short side," Al-Hussainy said.

Treasury yields reached their highest levels of the day before US markets opened, when the UK government bond market was rocked by reports that the government will drop a proposed income tax increase. Long-dated UK yields climbed as much as 14 basis points and remained near session highs.

Source: Bloomberg Europe

To stay updated on all economic events of today, please check out our Economic calendar

Risk Warnings and Disclaimers

You understand and acknowledge that there is a high degree of risk involved in trading. Following any strategies or investment methods may lead to potential losses. The content on the site is provided by our contributors and analysts for information purposes only. You are solely responsible for determining whether any trading assets, securities, strategy, or any other product is suitable for investing based on your own investment objectives and financial situation.

Add to Favorites

Adam

Stocks

There’s a fine line between a bubble and a market simply tripping over its own shoelaces when too many risk events collide at once. Right now, global equities feel less like 1999 mania and more like a high-speed convoy hitting a patch of converging hazards — AI funding math coming due, data-center capex that refuses to stay in its lane, geopolitics flaring, and bond markets twitching under the weight of the Fed’s hawkish recalibration. In this kind of traffic, even normal corrections look like smoke on the horizon.

But let’s start with the so-called AI bubble — the narrative du jour that refuses to die. You can practically hear the old-school market sages muttering that you only recognize a bubble in the rear-view mirror. And yet, the chatter today isn’t coming from the usual cranks; it’s bubbling up because expectations have sprinted well ahead of reality.

That alone doesn’t make this a ticking time bomb. It makes it what the early innings of every transformative tech cycle look like: investors pricing futures that haven’t been built yet.

The real fracture zone isn’t mystical; it’s steel, concrete, transformers, and debt. The data-center buildout remains the beating heart of the AI capex surge, and the industry is laying track faster than the revenue trains can realistically run on it. The OpenAI–Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) $100bn blueprint is a perfect example — only a tenth of that is actually committed, the other nine-tenths is vapor until demand proves itself and someone coughs up the financing.

For now, capacity is tight, not excessive. But plotted forward on any reasonable trajectory, supply catches up long before the monetization curve does.

Sam Altman practically admitted as much by pinning future revenue on products that don’t exist yet — enterprise expansions, cloud forays, robotics detours. That isn’t delusion; it’s the classic “we’ll grow into it” mantra that every capex-heavy revolution chants. But it also underscores the gulf between the cost of the buildout and the revenues needed to justify it. That’s the gap critics keep poking at — and they aren’t wrong to keep poking.

Still, handicapping growth is very different from claiming the technology will never pay its way. The deeper bubble risk lies not in the cranes and fiber lines but in the LLMs themselves: hallucinations, latency, and cost-to-run economics that, if left unresolved, could render wide swathes of AI chronically uneconomic. If that turns structural, then the capex overhang becomes a millstone. We just don’t know yet.

What we do know is that markets don’t wait patiently for clarity. If investors get spooked first — if the funding wheels wobble, if the AI debt machine hesitates — the selloff becomes its own self-fulfilling prophecy. That’s where the real correction risk lives: not in an implosion, but in a capital-rationing reset that forces weaker players to tap out.

OpenAI, Palantir (NASDAQ:PLTR), the single-product darlings with extreme multiples? They’d feel the blade first. Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), sitting on Fort Knox balance sheets and distribution dominance, would simply absorb the oxygen that others can’t afford.

And that’s the nuance missing from the “AI bubble” hot takes. Yes, some names are hanging on P/E ratios that assume everything breaks right. Palantir at 250x is expecting a hero’s journey with no bad chapters. Some will require years — maybe a decade — to grow into those skins. But the megacaps? Their multiples aren’t even nosebleed by the standards of this decade. If anything, the concentration risk has masked how un-bubbly the broader tech complex actually looks.

Meanwhile, the picks-and-shovels trade — the chips — is still running flat-out. AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) flagging a $1tn annual AI silicon market by 2030, with Nvidia set to reprise its earnings blowtorch next week. Yes, chip stocks are brutally cyclical, and yes, a data-center slowdown would bite hard. But no one sees that slowdown in the windshield right now.

So are we living through bubble trouble, or just a garden-variety correction amplified by too many risk wires crossing at once? The truth sits somewhere in the middle. Parts of the AI complex are priced for perfection. Parts are priced as industrials-in-disguise. And parts — the data-center landlords, the chip vendors, the hyperscaler balance-sheet giants — are behaving nothing like a speculative bubble.

Call it what it is: a crowded runway with far too many planes trying to take off at once. The turbulence isn’t proof of a crash. It’s the predictable shake when the air currents of rate risk, capex math, valuation gravity, and AI ambition finally converge in the same pocket of sky.

Source: investing

Risk Warnings and Disclaimers

Add to Favorites

Adam

Economic

As Japanese authorities once again battle a slide in the yen, their efforts this time are struggling for traction, undermined by new prime minister Sanae Takaichi's promotion of advocates of big fiscal and monetary stimulus to key posts.

While Tokyo officials this week warned against sharp downward moves in the currency, maintaining the jawboning of previous administrations, their voices are increasingly competing with calls by new policy advisers preaching the benefits of a weak yen.

A proponent of expansionary fiscal and monetary policy, Takaichi filled seats in key government panels with advocates of big spending backed by low interest rates - policies that work to depreciate the yen's value.

For one, Takuji Aida, an economist who joined a panel on the government's growth strategy, stressed the benefits of a weak yen such as easing the blow to manufacturers from U.S. tariffs.

The reflationists' sanguine view on the weak yen contrasts with the concerns of previous administrations, who primarily focused on cost of living pressures caused by the currency's impact on imported inflation.

"The Takaichi administration hasn't escalated its warning, which suggests it is tolerating a weak yen," said Masafumi Yamamoto, chief currency strategist at Mizuho Securities.

"Given the administration doesn't seem to prioritise combatting a weak yen, it would take a slide below 155 per dollar for it to escalate verbal warnings and a fall below 160 to contemplate direct intervention in the market," he said.

To be sure, Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama warned on Wednesday that authorities were vigilant to "one-sided, sharp moves" in the exchange-rate market, adding the negative aspects of a weak yen have become more pronounced than the positives.

But the remarks failed to prop up the yen as they were short of more direct threats of currency intervention, such as that authorities were ready to take "decisive action."

Underscoring a lack of consensus within the administration, economic revitalisation minister, Minoru Kiuchi, said last month the weak yen had benefits to growth. On Tuesday, he said the boost to import costs from a weak yen was fading.

Such views have also helped fuel market expectations the Bank of Japan will be forced to go slow in raising interest rates, pushing the yen to a record low against the euro and a nine-month trough versus the U.S. dollar.

The dollar has risen about 5% against the yen since Takaichi won the ruling party's leadership race on October 4. It stood around 154.50 yen on Friday, after breaking a key milestone of 155 earlier this week.

INTERVENTION HURDLE HIGH

Japan last intervened in the currency market in July 2024 when the yen fell to a 38-year low of around 161.96 to the dollar. The BOJ also raised interest rates to 0.25% that month, causing the yen to strengthen to around 150 per dollar.

Such concerted action highlighted the concern then-premier Fumio Kishida had about a weak yen.

By contrast, Takaichi and her reflationist aides are fans of "Abenomics," a mix of big spending and bold monetary easing deployed in 2013. The policies helped reverse sharp yen rises blamed for prolonging deflation and economic stagnation.

Now, a weak yen has become a pain point for an economy that relies heavily on fuel and food imports. Yen declines have kept inflation above the BOJ's 2% target for well over three years, causing grumblings from households hit by rising living costs.

Mindful of broadening inflationary pressures, BOJ Governor Kazuo Ueda signaled the chance of a hike as soon as next month.

But Takaichi and her finance minister both made clear their displeasure over a near-term rate hike, saying Japan has yet to see inflation durably achieve the BOJ's target.

Almost a year since its last rate hike in January, investors have taken comfort in selling yen on prospects the BOJ is unlikely to hike steadily at a set pace.

"There's a higher chance than initially thought that Takaichi's administration would favour reflationary policies," said Ryutaro Kono, chief Japan economist at BNP Paribas.

"Given the administration's policy stance as suggested by the recent personnel appointments, it's hard to project the BOJ accelerating its pace of rate hikes," said Kono, who now expects the bank to hike twice next year instead of three times.

If BOJ rate hikes were put on hold, the only remaining tool to counter yen falls would be currency intervention.

But getting consent from Washington may be tough as U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has repeatedly signaled that rate hikes are the best way to prop up the yen.

Former BOJ official Toru Sasaki expects Japan to hold off intervening unless the yen falls below 165 to the dollar.

"Conducting yen-buying intervention at a time Japan's real interest rates remain deeply negative would be wasting foreign reserves."

Source: reuters

To stay updated on all economic events of today, please check out our Economic calendar

Risk Warnings and Disclaimers

Add to Favorites

Devin

Economic

The United States will slash its tariffs on goods from Switzerland to 15% from a crippling 39% under a new framework trade agreement, the Swiss government said on Friday.

The announcement followed U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer saying a deal between the two countries had been reached, adding that details would be announced later on Friday.

Richemont Chair Johann Rupert, who met President Donald Trump in the White House last week as part of a delegation of Swiss business executives, earlier had said he thought the punitive tariffs imposed by Washington were the result of a "misunderstanding" that would be cleared up quickly.

"The Swiss and the Americans are very much the same -- independent, don't like big government etc. etc., so I think this misunderstanding will be cleared up this week," Rupert told reporters after Richemont reported its latest results.

"I think we will hear more, from what I've gathered, we'll hear something today," Rupert said.

Swiss Economy Minister Guy Parmelin returned home on Friday after talks with Greer in Washington, saying: "We clarified virtually everything."

Parmelin declined to provide details of the discussions but said there would be further communication when everything is "finally clear."

The government gave no new details on Friday.

A Swiss source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said after the Thursday meeting that a deal had effectively been reached.

A senior U.S. official said the meeting was "very positive."

Richemont's Rupert met Trump last week to discuss the impact of tariffs, along with executives from MSC, Rolex, Partners Group, Mercuria, and MKS.

The meeting helped thaw relations with Washington, Swiss media reported, and Trump said earlier this week he was working on a deal to lower the tariffs on goods from Switzerland.

Rupert said it could be months before a deal is signed.

"It's dependent on President Trump, who's a very busy man. Our situation in Switzerland is one of the things he has to deal with," he said.

Swiss industry on Friday reported a 14% fall in exports to the U.S. during the three months to the end of September, technology industry association Swissmem said, while machine tool makers saw shipments slump 43%.

A potential reduction in tariffs to 15% would stabilise the Swiss economy, Rupert said, and prevent job losses caused by the higher duty.

"It's not only us," he added. "It's potentially devastating for the whole of Switzerland."

Source: Asia_Nikkei

To stay updated on all economic events of today, please check out our Economic calendar

Risk Warnings and Disclaimers

Add to Favorites

Winkelmann

Stocks

Economic

Key points:

· Case involves fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people

· Boeing had agreed to plead guilty during Biden administration

· Judge said he had no authority to reject deal struck under Trump administration

Families of some victims of two Boeing737 MAX plane crashes that killed 346 people asked a U.S. appeals court on Thursday to reverse a judge's decision to approve the Justice Department's request to dismiss a criminal case against the planemaker.

Judge Reed O'Connor, of U.S. District Court in Fort Worth, Texas, last week approved the request by the Trump administration's Justice Department, but harshly criticized the government's decision.

He said he did not agree that dismissing the case, which had been pursued under the Biden administration and initially resulted in an admission of guilt, was in the public interest.

The families asked the 5th Circuit Court to reverse his decision. They said the Justice Department violated their rights as crime victims when it negotiated a deferred prosecution deal with Boeing over a fraud charge stemming from false representations the planemaker made to the Federal Aviation Administration.

"We believe that the courts don't have to stand silently by while an injustice is perpetrated," said Paul Cassell, a lawyer for some of the families. "The charges against Boeing cannot simply be dropped."

Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. The Justice Department last week rejected the judge's criticism and said it believed the deal was "the most just outcome."

O'Connor said in 2023 that "Boeing's crime may properly be considered the deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history."

He said he had no authority to reject the government's decision to make a deal with Boeing, even though it "fails to secure the necessary accountability to ensure the safety of the flying public."

Boeing last year had agreed to plead guilty to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge after the fatal 737 MAX crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia in 2018 and 2019.

After U.S. PresidentDonald Trumptook office, the Justice Department reversed course in May and dropped the demand for a guilty plea.

Under the deal, Boeing agreed to pay an additional $444.5 million into a crash victims' fund to be divided evenly per victim of the two fatal 737 MAX crashes, on top of a new $243.6 million fine and more than $455 million to strengthen the company's compliance, safety, and quality programs.

In September, the FAA proposed fining Boeing $3.1 million for a series of safety violations, including actions tied to a January 2024 Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 mid-air emergency, and for interfering with safety officials' independence.

Separately, a jury in Chicago on Wednesday ordered Boeing to pay more than $28 million to the family of Shikha Garg, a United Nations environmental worker who was killed in the crash in Ethiopia. Under a deal between the parties, the family will receive $35.85 million - the full verdict amount plus 26% interest - and Boeing will not appeal.

Source: TradingView

To stay updated on all economic events of today, please check out our Economic calendar

Risk Warnings and Disclaimers

Add to Favorites

Adam

Commodity

After 43 days, the U.S. government is back in business, and while the end of the longest government shutdown in history has improved geopolitical sentiment, it has done little to stifle gold’s bullish momentum.

The yellow metal continues to see a solid recovery from last month’s sharp selloff. Spot gold is holding new support at $4,200 an ounce.

Although geopolitical uncertainty has diminished slightly, one analyst expects the focus to shift to a much bigger problem: the U.S. government’s unsustainable debt, which continues to rise as President Donald Trump shows himself to be another spendthrift politician.

Trump has once again made headlines as he promises to send Americans $2,000 checks using money raised from elevated tariffs. He has also promised $10,000 bonuses for “patriot” air traffic controllers. Trump has further floated the idea of creating 50-year mortgages.

Nicky Shiels, Head of Research and Metals Strategy at MKS PAMP, said this fiscal environment is positive for hard assets like gold and silver.

“All this is simply bringing forward stimulus to the broader economy, because the administration understands parts of the economy are slowing; it’s a preview of what's to come (stimulus) into midterms. Trump is going to run the U.S. hot at the expense of deficits & the US’ fiscal state into Nov ’26, because they must pivot more populist following recent election results,” she said in a note.

The U.S. government already has difficulty selling its debt. This week, the U.S. Treasury saw weaker-than-expected participation in both 10-year and 30-year bond auctions. Analysts note that 30-year bond sales have been soft for most of this year.

Shiels said that Trump’s 50-year mortgage idea could be the most problematic. While American consumers would have lower monthly housing costs, the interest on a 50-year mortgage would be nearly double.

“Essentially, it's just an IOM, effectively just renting a place from the bank, and importantly, it might be a path to the 50yr Treasury bond and terming out the debt,” she said.

Looking ahead, Shiels said that all this financial market uncertainty could continue to support gold and silver prices, and investors might even see a Santa Claus rally into the new year.

Source: kitco

Risk Warnings and Disclaimers

Add to Favorites

Olivia Brooks

Political

Economic

Kansas City Federal Reserve President Jeffrey Schmid indicated Friday that he might dissent again at the Fed's December meeting if policymakers decide to cut interest rates further, citing persistent inflation concerns that extend beyond tariff impacts.

Schmid was one of two officials who opposed the Fed's October decision to lower the policy rate by a quarter percentage point to the 3.75%-4.00% range. In his remarks at an energy conference in Denver co-hosted by the Dallas and Kansas City Fed banks, he explained his position.

"I view the current stance of monetary policy as being only modestly restrictive, which is about where I think it should be," Schmid said, reiterating his belief that cooling in the U.S. job market stems from structural changes that lower interest rates cannot address.

The Kansas City Fed president expressed concern that additional rate cuts could undermine the Fed's 2% inflation target. "This was my rationale for dissenting against the rate cut at the last meeting and one that continues to guide my thoughts as I head into the meeting in December," he stated, while noting his final decision would depend on upcoming economic data.

Schmid emphasized that his inflation worries go beyond tariffs. "Though tariffs are likely contributing to higher prices, my concerns are much broader than tariffs alone," he said, pointing to uncertainty about when and how businesses will pass higher costs to consumers.

Several Fed policymakers have voiced similar inflation concerns since the October meeting, creating tension with those who fear the labor market could deteriorate without further rate cuts. This division suggests the December 9-10 meeting will involve intense debate.

Schmid also warned about inflation expectations, saying the Fed has "no room to be complacent" and that "persistent inflation can shift the psychology around price-setting, and inflation can become ingrained." He cautioned, "It is unlikely that we will still be talking about soft landings in that situation."