The traditional relationship where economic performance dictated political outcomes has flipped. Now, political priorities like tariff policies, reshoring, and populist movements are the primary drivers of economic trends, creating a more unpredictable environment for investors.
Investors seek a sweet spot where government fiscal laxity is high enough to generate attractive yield premiums but not so extreme that it threatens the system's viability. This creates a market for lending to slightly imperfect, high-quality credits.
After a decade of negative real returns, bonds are now attractive on a pure valuation basis relative to equities. PIMCO's CIO suggests bonds may outperform stocks over the next 5-10 years, making a compelling case for allocation regardless of their traditional role as a correlation hedge.
The Federal Reserve can tolerate inflation running above its 2% target as long as long-term inflation expectations remain anchored. This is the critical variable that gives them policy flexibility. The market's belief in the Fed's long-term credibility is what matters most.
Trillion-dollar AI investments are often funded using decades-old off-balance-sheet vehicles like "contingent make-whole guarantees." This obscures the true credit risk, which relies on the guarantee of a large tech tenant, not the underlying assets (e.g., a data center).
Unlike the post-GFC era, governments now lack the fiscal and monetary flexibility to cushion every economic shock due to high debt levels. This is forcing global markets to trade on their own fundamentals again, creating volatility and relative value opportunities reminiscent of the pre-2008 era.
Historically, lower-quality credit cycles involved periods of high returns followed by giving all the gains back in a downturn. Post-GFC, the absence of a sustained recession has allowed private credit to outperform high-quality bonds by 7% annually without the typical "give it all back" phase, masking latent risks.
According to PIMCO's CIO, post-crisis regulation heavily targets the last failure point (e.g., banks and consumer lending post-GFC). This makes previously regulated sectors safer while risk migrates to areas that escaped scrutiny, like today's non-financial corporate credit market.