How Low Can They Go?

The Federal Reserve this past week signaled its willingness to lower short-term interest rates, with the "overarching" goal of sustaining the economic expansion, according to the central bank's chairman, Jerome Powell. Mark Haefele, chief investment officer for UBS global wealth management, suggests that "the bond market is, in fact, telling us the Fed's fear of an economic slowdown will push into aggressive preemptive action," bolstering stock investors' confidence that the central bank will do whatever is needed to sustain the expansion at its 10th anniversary. [...]to Trey Reik, senior portfolio manager at Sprott Asset Management, gold's resurgence reflects one thing, the massive global debt buildup-which he says induces the world's central bankers to keep interest rates low. According to Tradeweb, the real yield on five-year Treasury inflation-protected securities, or TIPS, plunged to a low on Thursday of 0.211% from an even 1% at the end of 2018.