Finance & economics | Buttonwood

A new phase in the financial cycle

The Treasury-bond yield curve flattens

GROWING UP IS hard to do but growing old is harder. As the business cycle matures and ages, it goes through phases, just as people do. These are mirrored in financial markets. Strategists like to talk in terms of early-, mid- or late-cycle investing. It is tricky to say when one stage ends and another begins, just as it is hard to delineate adulthood from adolescence. The markets drop some hints, though. The slope of the Treasury yield curve is one.

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Holding back the yields”

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