When Bad News is Good News

On today’s show, we are taking a look at why interest rates for commercial real estate are actually falling despite the hawkish rhetoric this past week from Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell. Since the middle of the summer we have seen rising yields on the 10 year treasury. The rate peaked on the 19th of October at 4.99%. This benchmark rate has a much larger impact on Real Estate Investors Than the federal reserves short term, federal funds rate. Rates went up over the summer and into the early fall, because the US treasury has been printing vast sums of money and issuing new debt in addition to the rollover of existing debt that has matured.

We have seen the 10 year yield fall to 4.43% since the middle of October. That’s more than 0.5% drop in less than a month, even though the Fed is holding short term rates steady.

This is one of those stories where bad news is good news. The thinking is that if the economy is weak and we enter a deflationary recession, or a disinflationary recession, the Fed will pivot from their hawkish stance and lower interest rates. The mainstream media including the Wall Street Journal is pushing a narrative that the lower CPI numbers are the reason we need to celebrate that interest rates have peaked and are heading down from here. I think the story is more complex and more nuanced than that.

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Host: Victor Menasce

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