SINGAPORE/WASHINGTON- US Treasury yields hit one-year highs on Wednesday, lending support to the dollar but pressuring lofty valuations for stocks, as investors reckoned that a stimulus-fuelled global recovery will eventually bring rising inflation.
Benchmark ten-year US Treasury yields rose as far as 1.3330 percent in Asia, the highest since February 2020, although they later eased back to 1.2989 percent.
The gap over two-year yields also opened to its widest in nearly three years, as traders figure that short-term monetary policy will stay accommodative, even as the world bounces back from the pandemic.
The prospect of better risk-free returns weighed on equities and MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was stalled just shy of Tuesday’s record peak.
Japan’s Nikkei fell 0.7 percent and S&P 500 futures slipped 0.3 percent after the index posted a small fall overnight.
“You’re basically taking away a deflation worry,” said Rob Carnell, chief economist in Asia at ING.
“It’s a general sense that things are moving back to normal, and probably the single biggest driver of that is the fall in COVID numbers in US, it’s the re-opening that really delivers you the growth,” he said. – Reuters
