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A look at the day ahead in U.S. and global markets from Mike Dolan
The dollar continues to ride higher on the back of an anxious pre-election climb in U.S. Treasury yields, notching its best levels in almost three months against the euro and yen on starkly contrasting economic and interest rate pictures.
With the International Monetary Fund’s annual meeting underway and G7 finance chiefs and central bankers gathering, the exceptional performance of the U.S. economy was underlined in updated IMF global forecasts on Tuesday.
The IMF revised its 2024 and 2025 U.S. GDP growth forecasts upward yet again – by two-tenths of a percentage point to 2.8% for this year and by three-tenths of a point to 2.2% for 2025.
While world growth forecasts at large have remained little changed, the U.S. GDP outlook for this year and next has now been lifted by a cumulative 0.7 and 0.5 points respectively since January. And only Canada among the G7 is expected to grow faster than the United States next year.
With U.S. economic surprise indexes at their most positive since April, this sort of backdrop partly explains the sharp rise in Treasury yields this month and the rising ‘terminal rate’ for Federal Reserve easing expectations.
The other driver of both Treasury yields and the dollar is the approach of Nov. 5’s election, where betting markets now lean heavily toward a win for Republican Donald Trump despite some concerns about distortions and manipulation by small groups of deep-pocketed punters.
Trump’s tax cuts and tariff plans, alongside rising speculation of a Republican clean sweep of Congress to boot, have unnerved investors about the implications for a U.S. budget deficit already at 6.4% of GDP as well as for domestic inflation and overseas growth.
With a 20-year bond auction in the wings on Wednesday, 10-year yields hit their highest level since July and, at 4.24%, have now climbed 25 basis points in just a week. The New York Fed’s estimate of a 10-year Treasury ‘term premium’ – a measure of compensation for risk investors demand to hold long-term debt – topped 20bps for the first time this year.
And yet, election bets may be just a little wary still of whiplash – not least given the dramatic change of fortunes and polling already seen over the summer.
Opinion polls still don’t suggest any concrete outcome, the latest Reuters/IPSOS opinion poll tracker this week still puts Democrat Kamala Harris three points ahead nationally and other polling shows a dead heat in the swing states.
Still, beyond the election, the dollar picture at least is very much flattered by the interest rate outlook overseas.