The run-up in Treasury yields has led to a lot of hand-wringing on Wall Street in recent days.
“Not a crisis but an eye-opener,” Rick Rieder, BlackRock’s chief investment officer of global fixed income, said on Sozzi Unleashed on Wednesday.
On Thursday, the 30-year Treasury (^TYX) yield rose to 5.43%, its highest level since 2004. The 10-year yield (^TNX) remained at its highest level since 2007, at 5.10%.
At some point, conventional thinking posits that rising bond yields could prompt a pullback in stocks by offering investors a more attractive alternative and raising borrowing costs. Strategists have thrown out the 4.5% level for the 10-year and 5% level on the 30-year yield as key thresholds.
With yields currently far exceeding those marks, one might expect more stock market carnage than what has come to pass. On Wednesday, the major indexes fell about 1%. Today, they’re down less than that.
Rieder doesn’t see any single number in benchmark yields as an absolute pain point for stocks, but he noted that it makes sense right now for investors to begin gravitating away from equities on the margin.
“It’s a trickier period,” he said, giving equities a B- grade.
“I look across sectors, I look across names … I like memory, I like compute, storage, but then I get a bit stuck,” he said about stocks.