Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities

Min Zeng wrote a good analysis last week on the rising asset values of Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities — at the same time inflation risk seems to be lessening. As Zeng points out, economic turmoil often leads to higher base yields on TIPS (and lower asset prices), because economic distress usually means lower inflation in the short term and also raises the specter of deflation.

Normally, when fears about the economy flare up, investors flee Treasury inflation-protected securities because their need to hedge inflation risk lessens. That was reflected in the selloff in TIPS that occurred in 2008, when the collapse of the Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. fueled a deflation scare.

Yet prices of TIPS have surged in recent days, pushing down the 10-year benchmark TIPS yield below zero for the first time since the Department of the Treasury started selling this type of bond in 1997.

The price swings for TIPS have been rather amazing in the last 10 days, given that this is one of the world’s most ‘boring’ investments. For most investors, TIPS are the super-safe ballast in their portfolio. This chart shows that the TIP ETF (in blue) has been outperforming the AGG (aggregate bond market, red) since Aug. 1, and also shows that TIPS prices soared about 3.6% in about 8 days before coming back down a bit:

This is the opposite of what happened in the 2008 financial crisis, set off by Lehman Brothers’ collapse, as this chart shows:

The TIP ETF was down almost 10% during the fall of 2008, while the overall bond market stayed close to zero. When people ask me about the risks of TIPS mutual funds, I speculate: The downside risk is probably about 10% — bad, but not a portfolio crusher.

TIPS are at very lofty levels right now, with negative real yields climbing way up the maturity chart, to right about 10 years. Next week’s reissue of a 5-year TIPS could draw a real yield of as low as negative 0.9%. That is shocking because this same TIPS was first auctioned in April 2011 with a real yield of negative 0.18%. That is a huge swing in four months.

Zeng points to the underlying risk of inflation, even amid this turmoil.

Michael Pond, head of inflation bonds strategy at Barclays Capital Inc. in New York, the world’s biggest dealer on TIPS, said the U.S. consumer price index, stripping out of food and energy, has been running at an annualized rate of 2.5% over the past six months and 2.9% over the past three. Some analysts and economists predict they could tick up further in coming months. …

I think another factor is the Fed’s recent guarantee of ultra-low interest rates for the next two years. TIPS investors know they will have almost no super-safe, higher-yielding options in the next two years (except for I Bonds, which are limited to $10,000 per Social Security number this year, $5,000 next year.) As we face across-the-board low rates, TIPS at least have the advantage of inflation protection, a plus in these uncertain times.

One highly discussed factor is completely missing from this equation: The downgrade of U.S. debt by Standard & Poors. Treasury markets have soared since the downgrade, with the 5-year Treasury falling from 1.32% on Aug. 1 to 0.96% on Aug. 12.

Can a TIPS investment go wrong in this environment? Definitely. Zeng also adds this, quoting Mihir Worah of PIMCO:

TIPs may suffer a selloff should the debt-crisis deteriorate continues, feeding into fears about recession, he said, adding that deflation worries could re-emerge.

Great question from reader Drew:

Tipswatch — I hear you on “buy and forget it”. I’ve been doing that for years to build out a 30-year ladder which anchors the ‘safe’ allocation within my portfolio.

But I have a bit of a wrinkle I’d like to ask you about —

I recently noticed that the longer-duration 30yr notes that I bought at auction just over the last two years have appreciated considerably. For example, a 30-year TIPS note with a 2.13% coupon maturing in 2/14/2040 is currently trading at almost 30% above what I paid for it. In other words, if I sold, I’d achieve 12+ years of coupon payments in one fell swoop.

Even the recent 10-yr that clocked in at 0.639%. I bought, spending $10,008 on a note that is now trading at 10,436. If I were to sell it, just a month latter, I’d net $429, or almost 7 years of coupon payments at once. I figure I could just double up the next time 10-years go to auction.

I’m tempted to do this. . . am I missing something? Obviously if I sell I’m left with some gaps in my ladder.

Drew, I am not a financial adviser – I don’t even play one on TV – but my initial reaction is this:

I can see the quandary. I also have some older Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities that pay a real yield of more than 2% and even 3%. I consider those prized assets, but they are aging. I have one issue that pays a coupon of 3.875% and matures in April 2029. No way would I sell that one. I need those higher-yielding issues to balance off some of these more recent lower yields.

But there is logic to what you are saying, since you can sell and reap a large amount of future interest payments in the form of instant capital gains (and a lower tax rate, too). My cautions would be: 1) make sure you get the price you want since TIPS in the open market are thinly traded, and 2) understand that you may never – at least for several years – be able to replace those higher-yielding issues. The real yield on TIPS has been declining for years and that decline has even escalated recently. Eventually, we will hit bottom and start back up.

But you are right that this is a great selling opportunity.

On the 10-year paying 0.639%, that is a yield you could easily see again in a few months. So selling it, if you can get a good price, is a non-issue.

(But then this sort of reminds me of the time when I bought Apple at $80, and then sold it a couple of months later at $11o. Hmm … that worked.)

As of today, I wouldn’t be a buyer of new TIPS issues, or TIPS mutual funds. The rates are ridiculously low for all Treasuries. Treasuries are priced for a deep recession. The Fed’s announcement today of continued near-zero interest rates for two years is a slap at savers. We have few places to turn, and this could last for many more months. The lousy TIPS yields of a few months ago – like your 0.639% on a 10-year – now look very attractive.

Could the entire TIPS yield curve eventually go negative? Whoa, I don’t want to even think about that.

One of my favorite bloggers, Michael Ashton (The Inflation Trader) posted this chart today on the trend in the 10-year Treasury yield:

If this really is a bubble, selling and getting your profit now does make sense, especially for a 10-year yielding 0.639%!

One nagging question: Where will you put that money that was earning the rate of inflation plus 0.639%, until you can reinvest it in a super-safe asset?

I won’t waver from my buy and hold strategy, though. But sometimes, I say: Don’t buy. This is one of those times.

The downgrade of U.S. debt might have helped to send world stock markets reeling, but the target of the downgrade – U.S. Treasuries – showed impressive power Monday as a ‘safe haven’ in uncertain times.

Yields on Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, and other Treasuries, should have risen on the downgrade – some experts predicted an increase of as much as 50 basis points. Instead, yields fell, pushing the TIP ETF up 1.21% to close at an all-time high of $115.

This one-day chart shows how Treasuries out-performed the overall bond market:

Normally, when the stock market plummets, it raises the specter of deflation, which tends to cause TIPS to under-perform overall Treasuries. That was true Monday.

But with Treasury yields so low, you might expect the overall bond market (which includes corporate bonds) to outperform with the appeal of higher interest rates. That wasn’t true Monday, because now there is a new fear: Recession, which could slam corporate profits.

Newly downgraded U.S. Treasuries are sitting at lofty levels, providing truly meager interest rates. The rate for a 10-year Treasury fell to a low of 2.33% on Monday, the lowest since January 2009. Here’s a nifty chart I found at TheAtlantic.com, which demonstrates how the S&P downgrade had a reverse effect, resulting in lower Treasury yields:

From the article by Daniel Indiviglio:

The louder S&P complains, the lower the yield on Treasuries. This is the opposite of what you might expect to see. The lower a yield, the higher the demand for a bond. Put another way, as S&P became more and more critical of U.S. Treasuries, investors were willing to pay more and more money for them.

From a Reuters report:

Treasuries benefited at the expense of risky assets including stocks, as investors maintained confidence that U.S. government debt may still be among the world’s safest assets, if no longer risk free. … “Treasuries are still a comparatively low-risk asset. I think there’s no doubt about that,” said Michael Schumacher, a strategist at UBS in Stamford, Connecticut.

This was inevitable, wasn’t it? China is the world’s largest holder of U.S. debt, and now it is holding downgraded debt.  China is not happy, as you can see in this report on Marketwatch.com:

“The U.S. government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone,” China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency said Saturday, in Beijing’s first official response to the S&P action, according to wire service reports.

“China, the largest creditor of the world’s sole superpower, has every right now to demand the United States to address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China’s dollar assets,” it said.

I love the simplicity of that language: “the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone.” There is so much truth to that statement that I think we should borrow 50 or so Chinese Communists to serve in the U.S. House and Senate. That is how bad things look in U.S. politics.

But China lecturing the United States on its fiscal policy – no matter how deserved – probably won’t help. Will we see a backlash response from the U.S.? Probably not, since China sits in front of a big pile of money in this poker game. In fact, the U.S. and China are economic partners, sort of an ‘arranged’ marriage.

What about TIPS? Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, as measured by the TIP ETF, had a wild 5 days last week but ended just about where they started, and still near all-time highs:

But that price swing was relatively minor in last week’s wild market:

Next week, despite the S&P downgrade, TIPS could stay relatively stable if the stock market continues its sharp decline. If stocks rebound, as they did Friday, TIPS yields could begin rising, because the ‘safe haven’ attraction is dimmed. Even if the S&P downgrade resulted in a 50 basis point increase in TIPS yields, that would just bring the yields back to April levels.

For holders of the TIP ETF (I don’t own it), a 50 basis point increase in TIPS yield would result in about a 2% drop in NAV, hardly a disaster.

Eventually, TIPS are going to have to reflect the new reality: The economy is possibly heading toward another recession, and inflation may not be a threat in the short term.

Or … will the Fed step in with QE3 if the economy tanks (giving TIPS a boost)?

Upcoming auction. The uncertainty makes the Aug. 18 reissue of a 5-year TIPS especially unattractive, in my opinion. The likely real yield has been wavering well below  the all-time low of negative 0.55% in October 2010, right before the launch of QE2.

Friday’s yield, after TIPS took a hit, was negative 0.676% for the 5-year TIPS maturing July 15, 2016.

The auction announcement will come Aug. 11.