U.S. Treasury Debt

Recently, the sharp rise in international gold prices has attracted the attention of investors from almost all over the world. Behind the frenzied buying in the gold market, another safe-haven asset, U.S. Treasury bonds, presents a completely different scene of depression. A series of weak performance at U.S. Treasury auctions has stoked investor concerns that the market will struggle to absorb the massive issuance of Treasury debt. In the past week, after weak demand for the US$39 billion 10-year Treasury bond auction, the bond market sell-off triggered by higher-than-expected U.S. CPI in March intensified. Investors also showed little interest in the three-year and 30-year U.S. Treasury auctions. Behind the growing caution among bond market investors is the growing belief that U.S. inflation is not yet fully under control and that the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates at multi-decade highs in the coming months or even years. The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note, known as the “anchor of global asset pricing” and the benchmark for pricing borrowing rates from mortgages to corporate loans, closed at around 4.5% last…