The 30-year Treasury yield hit 5.31%. Highest since 2007. Traders are waiting for FOMC minutes due later this week as if those minutes will contain the secret code to print money instead of the usual 47 pages explaining why they did exactly what everyone already knew they did.
Here's what happened: bonds sold off. Yields went up. That's how bonds work. Price goes down, yield goes up. Inverse relationship. This is not advanced mathematics. This is the kind of thing you learn on day one and then spend the next 19 years pretending you need to read the news to understand.
But no. Every retail trader with a Robinhood account and a dream is refreshing their news feed waiting for Jerome Powell's book club notes to tell them which direction numbers go. The chart already told you. It told you last week. It told you last month. The 30-year has been climbing since July and you've been ignoring it because you were too busy reading headlines about what traders are "awaiting."
The FOMC minutes will say the economy is strong but inflation is concerning and they're data-dependent and they'll continue to monitor conditions. Same thing they've said for three years. Same thing they'll say next quarter. You could write them yourself. You could've traded the chart instead.
Traders are awaiting the minutes the way a dog awaits his owner's permission to eat food that's already in his mouth. The trade already happened. The yield already moved. The chart already broke out. But sure, wait for the minutes. Wait for the news. Wait for someone to explain to you why the line went up. I'm sure that's a profitable strategy for people who enjoy being consistently wrong while feeling informed.
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