Yields are going to creep higher across the curve, says Macquarie Group's Thierry Wizman

All right, Barb, I’m going back to you. I know I just cut you off basically right off the top of this discussion. But now that we’ve gotten two more earnings reports in particular when I look at United and the fact that they have fewer aircraft that are being joining the fleet this year, this to me sounds like at a time where the market’s so focused on inflation and how sticky it is right now. This sounds like the type of thing that could continue to at least add a add a floor if you will to airline pricing which is part of that services piece of the inflation that’s been so sticky. Yeah, no, I I think you’re right. You know I think what you’re seeing that obviously their demand is very strong because they’re, you’re seeing continued rebound of the business traveler. It’s probably back to like 9697%. The domestic leisure travel is strong and international travel strong. I mean X probably China, you know, but I think you’re just going to continue and that’ll be interesting to see what their guidance is because sounds like you know that’s a very similar path to Delta. And as we know a week or two ago Delta reported very good numbers and had a really strong guidance going forward. So it looks like that can continue. Consumer is still allocating their their dollars toward leisure, travel, entertainment, restaurants, this sort of thing. All right. Now, Terry, were you surprised at all by Fed Chair Powell’s language today when some folks thought he was just going to be talking about Canada, but he talked about, hey, hire for longer, no immediate reason to cut and there was some reaction to that. But how does that factor into how you’re looking at bond yields and where it’s safe to be? Yeah. Well, Well, first, thanks, John. Thanks, John, for the question because it’s a great one. It, you know, what happened here with Powell? Well, he had to join effectively the other 18 Fed officials who have not been nearly as dovish as Powell was on March 20th. I think he’s coming to the realization that yes, there is a problem to some extent with inflation. But more importantly, he was an outlier among the 19 Fed officials and probably an outlier among the FOMC as well. Based on the speeches that were given by the Fed officials over the last 2 1/2 weeks and and continuing to this week, they certainly did not follow his lead into into the into dovishness and I think he just didn’t want to be that outlier anymore. I think it was to some extent, you know unusual that he’d be the only one. Granted he’s the chairman but to be the only one to to to argue in favor and debilitate in favor rate cuts seemed unusual and and out of step. Having said that, you know he didn’t give the market anything they didn’t already know, which is that rates are not going to go down nearly as fast as the market had previously thought, let’s say back a month ago. And I think the implication here is that yields are going to creep higher across the curve in the US Remember the 10 year yield was as high as 5% back in the fourth quarter of last year and that was not at a time when the economy was not nearly looking to be as strong and inflation was on the way down. If we now have a situation where the economy is doing well and inflation it seems to be trending higher, why not see 5% yields again on the 10 year? I think that’s conceivable over the next few weeks. And when that happens, I think there will be multiple pressure on multiples on the stock market and we could see stocks sink lower despite what the good news might be on the earnings side. I am curious though, Terry, I mean it sounds like you’re a bond bear here. Does the geopolitical landscape change that investing thesis in any way depending on how things play out in the Middle East here in the coming hours, in the coming days? I think if you are long bonds, if you’re a bond bull as opposed to a bond bear, you want to see two things really, two extremes on the axis of war and peace. You want to see total peace, which is good because it’s disinflationary. You or you want to see Total War, which will cause a massive flight to quality outside of stocks, outside of commodities and into the bond market, into the US Treasury bond specifically that. So you would have a bond rally under Total War and you have a bond rally in in in peacetime as well. Unfortunately, we have neither right now. We have a situation where we’re stuck with with shadow wars and and proxy wars and wars on borders, but not necessarily including the superpowers. I think that situation is is a situation that just promotes a lot of uncertainty, puts a geopolitical risk premium upward on things like oil. It keeps inflation higher than otherwise would be, keeps insurance rates higher than otherwise would be. It’s not a good situation if you’re if you’re holding bonds.