DEMAND FOR TIPS

In a few weeks one of the most famous sports sayings will once again be in the headlines at the Indianapolis 500: "Gentlemen, start your engines."
 
 A while back we unloaded most of our TIPS at a nice profit when the yields were getting weaker than new born kittens. Is this a wake-up call or just another false start? You be the judge.

Bloomberg: - The U.S. sale of $18 billion in five-year Treasury Inflation Protected Securities drew the strongest demand ever from a class of investors that includes foreign central banks.

Indirect bidders bought 58.4 percent of the securities at the TIPS sale. That compared with an average of 42.3 percent at the past 10 auctions. The bid-to-cover ratio, which gauges demand by comparing the amount bid with the amount offered, was 2.7, matching the highest level since December 2012. The notes sold at a yield of negative 0.213 percent, below the negative 0.162 percent average forecast of five of the Fed’s 22 primary dealers in a Bloomberg News poll.

“The stats were off the charts,” said Stanley Sun, a New York-based strategist at Nomura Holdings Inc., a primary dealer, said in a telephone interview.

The five-year breakeven rate (a rough measure of implied inflation expectations) jumped as a result.