Fixed income markets are expecting that the Federal Reserve will maintain interest rates steady through 2020, with no anticipated increases or decreases. Performance was positive across all bond sectors in 2019, with yields stabilizing towards the end of the year.
Ending the year at 1.92%, the yield on the 10-year Treasury bond is still the highest yield available among the developed government bond market. Government bond yields in developed economies such as Germany and Japan were still negative at the end of the year.
To shore up liquidity at the end of 2019 to avert a market disruption, as occurred in December 2018, the Fed injected billions of dollars into the repurchase-agreement market, also known as the repo market, and also bought roughly $400 billion of bonds since October 2019. The strategy has been very similar to the Fed’s quantitative easing program enacted during the financial crisis, also known as Q.E.
Sources: Federal Reserve, U.S. Treasury
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