Clearly the selling of TSYs by China is a clear negative for bond prices. However, what Deutsche Bank accurately notes, is that should the world undergo a dramatic plunge in risk assets, the resulting tsunami of residual liquidity will most likely end up in the long-end, sending Treasury yields lower. To wit:
… if investors believe that liquidity is likely to continue to fall one should not sell real yields but buy them and be more worried about risk assets than anything else. This flies in the face of recent concerns that China’s potential liquidation of Treasuries for FX intervention is a Treasury negative and should drive real yields higher.… More generally the simple point is that falling reserves should be the least of worries for rates – as they have so far proven to be since late 2014 and instead, rates need to focus more on risk assets.
The relationship between central bank liquidity and the byproduct of FX reserve accumulation is clearly central to risk asset performance and therefore interest rates. The simplistic error is to assume that all assets are treated equally. They are not – or at least have not been especially since the crisis. If liquidity weakens and risk assets trade badly, rates are most likely to rally not sell off. It doesn’t matter how many Treasury bills are redeemed or USD cash is liquidated from foreign central bank assets, US rates are more likely to fall than rise especially further out the curve. In some ways this really shouldn’t be that hard to appreciate. After all central bank liquidity drives broader measures of liquidity that also drives, with a lag, economic activity.
Two points: we agree with DB that if the market were to price in collapsing “outside” money, i.e. central bank liquidity, that risk assets would crush (and far more than just the 20-40% hinted above). After all it was central bank intervention and only central bank intervention that pushed the S&P from 666 to its all time high of just above 2100.
