Are Longterm Interest Rates Telling Us Something?I rarely cite financial news in my market updates.
My reasoning is simple: all perspectives, bullish or bearish, are ultimately reflected in price action. That price action forms patterns, and those patterns can be analyzed to produce reasonable forecasts. After years of applying Elliott Wave theory, this approach has consistently stood the test of time.
That said, I’ll break from tradition today, as I believe the following excerpt is particularly relevant to my latest Trading View update. It comes from Barbara Kollmeyer’s article, “There’s a slow-motion crisis in bonds — and this bearish strategist thinks it will hit stocks.”
For context, I regularly track multiple market indices, futures contracts, single stocks, and notably, the yield on the 30-year U.S. Treasury Bond. For the past year, I’ve highlighted the counterintuitive rise in long-term yields that ironically began when the Fed started cutting its benchmark rate in September 2024. While brief divergences between long-term yields and Fed policy aren’t unusual, this persistent uptrend is different. The yield has been carving out a clear pattern of higher highs and higher lows, appearing now on the verge of a breakout—not just toward incremental new highs, but potentially into a runaway scenario for long-term rates.
This is why Albert Edwards’ recent comments caught my attention:
“There is a slow-motion crisis unfolding in the government bond markets that equity investors continue to ignore at their peril. The upward grind for long bond yields has been relentless, yet investors keep ignoring that to focus instead on more bullish metrics such as the latest reporting season driven by the mega-cap IT stocks, that promises a pot of gold at the end of the AI rainbow.”
His perspective resonated with me.
Having lived through the dot-com boom and bust, I recall how new technologies can fuel outsized market optimism. AI undoubtedly carries transformational potential, much like the Internet. But just as it took nearly two decades for the Internet to fully translate from speculative boom to tangible economic value, AI’s payoff will likely follow a similarly extended trajectory. It’s not an immediate catalyst.
What I am certain of is this: the cost of long-term money is rising, with implications far beyond bond charts. Higher yields directly affect mortgage rates and other long-term financing costs. More importantly, sustained upward pressure in long-term rates has the potential to weigh heavily on equities, broader markets, and asset valuations for far longer than many currently expect.
