Yields soar some more

The yield on 10-year US Treasuries rose above 5% for the first time since 2023 on Monday.

U.S. Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent. (Alex Wong/Getty Images) Hey Snackers, If you’re looking for inflationary pressures as prices keep rising on everyday necessities, look no further than this far-from-humble loaf of rye bread, being sold for $60. The 3.3 pound round has only three ingredients: salt, water, and rye grown in “ancestral soil.” It takes 32 hours for each loaf to go from flour to the shelf, and the time-intensive process is part of the explanation for the price. But don’t accuse father-son duo Martin and Tim Auer of turning a blind eye to cost concerns: they’re also selling half- and quarter-loafs for $30 and $15, respectively.  Stocks fell on Monday as crude oil prices rose. PLEASE YIELD Treasuries have crossed 5% for the first time since 2023. What gives? The yield on 10-year US Treasuries rose above 5% for the first time since 2023 on Monday, before fading below its daily high-water mark. The rise in the benchmark rate – to which trillions of dollars in assets are linked – comes after Friday’s Consumer Price Index release showed inflation data for August was above the Fed’s 2% target. That reading makes a rate hike all-but certain when the Fed rate-setting body meets this week.  As we’ve written about, the Treasury Department has tried to pull rates down by buying back government bonds – in the debt market, yields fall as prices rise and vice versa, so a large buyback program should in theory push prices up and bring rates down – but it hasn’t exactly worked. Indeed, bond traders were so underwhelmed by the scope and details of the $6 billion Treasury plan that yields rose after it was released. Part of the problem facing the Treasury is that it’s not just trying to swim against the tide of the massive market for US government debt, but sovereign debt across the developed world. As George Pearkes, a macro strategist at Bespoke Investment Group, noted, 10-year bonds issued by Japan, Germany and the UK have all been rising too.  Indeed, looking at short-term rates before and after the US war with Iran sent oil prices surging, shows a clear divergence. Something very clearly started driving rates up, and effectively cutting off something like a fifth of global oil flows appears to have a lot to do with it.  All of that leaves Fed Chair Kevin Warsh in a tight spot. The case for a rate hike is clear to economists – and, it would appear, to the members of the Fed’s Open Markets Committee – but Warsh also has to deal with an audience in the White House that’s been consistently jawboning for lower rates.  THE TAKEAWAY “If the Fed doesn’t start to act, then we start to get into more serious problems,” Standard Bank’s head of G10 strategy Steve Barrow told Bloomberg. He saw rates rising past 5% back in February. “All the signs for me are still of higher inflation,” he said. And that means Treasury yields could rise even higher.  — Ben Walsh C THE DIFFERENCE If you remember the hype around those somewhat smaller, somewhat cheaper, and definitely more brightly colored iPhones that were released in 2013, there’s good reason: there was a lot of it. The iphone 5c, along with the 5s released at the same time, marked the peak of media hype around Apple’s annual unveiling, based on US Google search interest.  — Thomas Jones That’s the value of the stock Corning could sell.  Shares ended Monday down 13%  but are still up almost 87% over the past twelve months thanks to demand for fiber-optic infrastructure tied to data center buildouts – and from the company’s perspective, selling shares is precisely the right thing to do when you’re on that kind of run.  What else we're Snackin' “AI Bosses Clash With Trump on Their Calls to Slow AI Development” – Bloomberg “Donald Trump Jr.’s Bahamas wedding was secretly bankrolled by russian oligarch close to Putin” – ProPublica “Malls Were Left for Dead. Now They Are the Top Performer in Commercial Real Estate.” – The Wall Street Journal Snack Fact of the Day The lanmaoa asiatica mushroom causes hundreds of people a year to enter hospitals in China’s Yunan Province with the same complaint, the BBC reports: hallucinations of tiny elves. Researchers first chronicled the phenomenon of these so-called “lilliputian hallucinations” in 1991, and found that they are caused by undercooking the mushroom after the annual foraging season. What’s still puzzling researchers more than three decades later, however, is why the mushrooms – more closely related to the commonly eaten porcini than typical hallucinogenic varieties – cause such specifically similar reactions.   Tuesday August retail sales report slated for release at 8:30 a.m. ET. Craving more insights in your inbox? Subscribe to EntryPoint  and Scoreboard for quality reads. 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