(New York)

The prospect for rising inflation has been terrifying the market, and investors need a way to play it. April gold futures peaked at $1750 on intraday trading after the recent Federal Reserve decision to leave the federal funds rate unchanged, and that tells investors something important: gold may be the way to go. Moreover, Powell said the fed funds rate would remain unchanged until 2023, even if economic news improved. The Fed even plans to tolerate higher than 2% inflation given inflation has averaged well below the Fed’s Target the past year. This was enough to spike gold prices as investors are now as concerned about future inflation as many investors see the commodity as a hedge. Treasury yield rises had many investors worried the Fed would preemptively tighten, and Gold was down before investors realized how committed the Fed was.

FINSUM: Spreads between inflation-indexed and nominal bonds (TIPS spreads) indicate that rising yields are driven by inflation risk. Gold is one of the most assured hedges against future Inflation.

(Beijing)

The U.S. is set to ramp up its stimulus efforts as it passes the Biden Administrations' $1.9 trillion covid relief package. China, however…view the full story on our partner Magnifi’s site

(New York)

Yields have been moving all over the place. And while there are daily moves higher or lower, there is a definitive bias towards sharp moves upward. Accordingly, investors need to be thinking about rate hedging. Investors are in a tough place as Treasury yield rises have been causing losses, but the bonds themselves still don’t have high enough yields to be attractive. With that in mind, there are a couple ways investors can go about protecting themselves. Firstly, they can buy floating rate bond-focused ETFs, which give protection but have very low yields. The other opportunity is to buy into bond funds that access riskier corners of the markets, where yields are much higher and durations are shorter, giving less rate sensitivity.

FINSUM: Our favorite ETFs for this purpose are from ProShares, specifically IGHG, which hedges rate risk but still offers the yield income.