Bond-Market Tumult Puts ‘Lower for Longer’ in the Crosshairs

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/bond-market-tumult-puts-lower-for-longer-in-the-crosshairs-11614517200

Excerpt:

A wave of selling during the past two weeks drove the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which helps set borrowing costs on everything from corporate debt to mortgages, to above 1.5%, its highest level since the pandemic began and up from 0.7% in October.

….

Traders said concerning dynamics were evident in a Treasury auction late last week. Demand for five- and seven-year Treasurys was weak Thursday heading into a $62 billion auction of seven-year notes and nearly evaporated in the minutes following the auction, which was one of the most poorly received that analysts could remember.

The seven-year note was sold at a 1.195% yield, or 0.043 percentage point higher than traders had expected — a record gap for a seven-year note auction, according to Jefferies LLC analysts. Primary dealers, large financial firms that can trade directly with the Fed and are required to bid at auctions, were left with about 40% of the new notes, about twice the recent average.

Author(s): Julia-Ambra Verlaine, Sam Goldfarb

Publication Date: 28 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

Keith Gill Drove the GameStop Reddit Mania. He Talked to the Journal.

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/keith-gill-drove-the-gamestop-reddit-mania-he-talked-to-the-journal-11611931696

Excerpt:

The investor who helped direct the world’s attention to GameStop, leading a horde of online followers in a bizarre market rally that made and lost fortunes from one day to the next, says he’s just a normal guy.

“I didn’t expect this,” said Keith Gill, 34 years old, known as “DeepF—ingValue” by fans on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum and “Dada” by his 2-year-old daughter. He said he didn’t set out to draw the attention of Congress, the Federal Reserve, hedge funds, the media, trading platforms and hundreds of thousands of investors.

“This story is so much bigger than me,” Mr. Gill told The Wall Street Journal in his first interview since the unboxing this week of a volatile new stock-market game. “I support these retail investors, their ability to make a statement.”

Author(s): Julia-Ambra Verlaine and Gunjan Banerji

Publication Date: 29 January 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal