When the news gets intense or weird, bonds often point to how the economy is processing the developments and provide hints to where it may be going. With President Joe Biden withdrawing from the November election and making way for Vice President Kamala Harris to take on Republican Donald Trump, the bond market hasn’t noticeably changed its bets. But as more information comes in, it might.
The bond market is not that interested in who wins the presidential contest, according to Dirk Willer, global head of macrostrategy and asset allocation at Citi Research.
“The market cares more about whether you have a divided government or not, rather than about which party runs the government,” Willer said.
If the parties have to share power, not as much gets done, Willer said. But the more government either party controls, the more they can spend and the more debt they can create.
“Investors have realized something about the U.S. political system, which is that there’s no party in favor of controlling the deficit,” said David Kelly, chief strategist for J.P. Morgan Asset Management.
Kelly added that controlling debt is not in the Republican platform this year, and Democrats haven’t mentioned it much either.
According to Marvin Loh, senior global macro strategist at State Street Global Markets, the more debt the government takes on, the more bonds it has to issue and the more investors it has to persuade to buy them.
“We do have some really scary debt numbers. Next year we’ll have [an aggregate] debt-to-GDP number in excess of 100%,” Loh said. “Yeah, they’ll buy, but it’s going to cost you something, and the cost is a higher yield.”
A “higher yield” as in higher payments for future borrowing, which is ultimately why the bond market cares about how the election goes. A 10-year bond is meant to be a good deal for 10 years, so it tries to predict the future for 10 years — where will interest rates go, what will inflation do, how good will this bond look as an investment over its decadelong term?
This election could make a difference in all of that. Right now, Willer said, the bond market’s prediction hasn’t changed much with Biden dropping out.
“It was expected,” Willer said. “And people still think Trump right now is the favorite.”
But the fact that things haven’t moved a ton also means there’s a lot of uncertainty, said Steve Blitz, chief U.S. economist at TS Lombard.
“The politics of who’s going to win and not win begin to really play on the market once Harris is the presumptive candidate and she’s actually campaigning,” Blitz said.
The bond market doesn’t seem to be pricing in policy shifts just yet.
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