It was back in mid-May when BofA's Michael Hartnett previewed the big pain trade of the second half and wrote that "investors are very long cash, IG bonds, stocks/tech, some long 2-year UST to play Fed cuts, but no one is long 30-year (annualizing 15% loss in '24) on debt dynamics/concern slowdown = more fiscal excess; this means that lower long yields is a very obvious “pain trade” in H2."
What has happened since then? Well, as Hartnett writes in his latest flow show note titled "It's coming home, Jerome" (and available to pro subs in the usual place), "over the past 3 months, 10-year UST has rallied from 4¾% to below 4¼%; bonds “big, fat & trendy”.... and predicts that if we "break below 4% (100-week ma) on 10-year Treasury and narrative shifts pronto from “soft” to “harder” landing."
This also leads into Hartnett's zeitgeist quote of the week, namely that “until investors need to buy bonds, they ain’t selling tech” and according to Hartnett, that time almost here. But it's not just the end of the relentless tech frenzy.
