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One thing that quite often puzzles people who do not work in financial markets is their tendency to treat seemingly good news as bad.
We got a classic example on Friday with news that US employers added 336,000 jobs in September.
That was up from 227,000 in August (a figure itself revised higher from the previous 187,000) and way ahead of the 170,000 Wall Street had been looking for.
The numbers were, in the jargon, very “hot”.
Good news? Well, yes, if you are one of the Americans who was able to move into employment during the month or switch to a better-paid role elsewhere.
So far as markets were concerned though, it was anything but good news.
The figures suggest that the US economy is continuing to motor, despite the fact that the US Federal Reserve has raised interest rates 11 times since March 2022 to combat inflation.
That, in turn, means that the Fed may have to resume rate hikes – having not done so since 27 July.
Accordingly, yields – which rise as the price falls – on US Treasury bonds spiked higher.
The yield on two-year notes jumped to as high as 4.847%, having closed on Thursday evening at 4.716%, while the yield on 10-year US Treasuries, which had been 4.716% on Thursday evening, jumped to as much as 4.858%.
Yields are now approaching the multi-year highs hit earlier this week as markets started to price in the possibility of interest rates remaining higher for longer – a process that got under way in earnest towards the end of September.
Hetal Mehta, head of economic research at the wealth manager St James’s Place, said: “Today’s payrolls print was punchy, with the monthly change nearly double what the market was expecting and the highest since January.
“When we zoom out, we can still see evidence of an improvement in the labour market imbalance, but…
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