Yield Curve Control Blues — Brian Romanchuk

The Bank of Japan surprised people with a change to its yield curve control (YCC) policy. This has caused a mild sell-off in Japanese bonds, with the 10-year Japanese Government Bond (JGB) yield up 15 basis points on the month when I last checked.

Although I think some of the usual suspects have tried to get excited about this — a harbinger of doom to Japan and/or the global fixed income complex! — this is still in nothingburger territory. (Note: people who discuss bond yield changes as a percentage of previous yields — e.g., “bond yields rose by 100%!” when the yields go to 0.2% from 0.1% — are innumerate clowns and are safe to ignore.) Nevertheless, if the yield cap was raised by a lot more, there would be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth.

One standard dodge of a forecaster is to say that this might be important for global bonds. This makes one sound like a very serious forecaster with an eye on those darned black swans. However, any number of things can cause global bond yields to rise. If you want to be a yield forecaster (I don’t!), at some point you have to put your money where your mouth is and either recommend long/short positions and/or option strategies (if you want to position for tail risks). Although I am not a forecaster, I see no reason why I would change any non-Japanese market views as a result of these recent events.