Investors Warm Up to Equities, Cool Down on Bonds
By John Derrick
Director of Research
We like to follow independent thinkers such as Greg Weldon who published an interesting analysis this week detailing a key change in the flow of investor funds. Since the earliest days of the crisis, investors have been skittish on equities while money poured into bonds despite very low yields. The volume and velocity in which funds left stocks for bonds since 2008 was unprecedented. This chart from Weldon shows the amount of Treasury Securities held by U.S. households since 1960. You can see that the total amount of Treasury holdings skyrocketed from $263.87 billion in December 2008 to greater than $1 trillion in less than two years.
This second chart is a measurement ratio of the S&P 500 Index versus the 10-Year U.S. Treasury Note futures contract. The chart shows that stocks have been in a downward trend since hitting an all-time peak in 2007. Even with the big bounce of 2009, stocks were unable to break this downward trend…until now.
Weldon has drawn in the trend line so it is easy to recognize. You can see that the stock breakout over the past several months has finally broken the downward trend. This is a very bullish signal for stocks as money rotates out of Treasuries and back into equities.
