(Bloomberg) -- Treasury 10-year yields may climb to 5% or higher as the US government boosts its debt supply to fund a multi-trillion dollar deficit, according to Franklin Templeton.
“Getting to 4.5% to 5% on the 10-year, that’s reasonable,” Sonal Desai, chief investment officer of Franklin Templeton Fixed Income, said in an interview in Tokyo. Should investors see the US deficit “blowing out enormously,” benchmark US yields could then go “above 5%,” she said.
Desai joins JPMorgan Asset Management and T. Rowe Price in warning of higher Treasury yields as investors start to price in what a second Donald Trump presidency may mean for debt markets. Treasuries have swung back and forth since the Nov. 5 election as traders weighed whether or not the Federal Reserve will be able to keep cutting interest rates if the federal budget deficit balloons.
Open interest data show traders are already loading up on positions that benefit from further Treasury losses in anticipation that Trump’s pledged policies will rekindle inflation. Any hint of faster-than-expected US consumer-price-index numbers due later Wednesday may further embolden short sellers.
The US 10-year note yielded 4.42% Wednesday, up from its close of 4.27% on the day of the Nov. 5 vote. The yield climbed to 4.48% on Nov. 6, the highest since July, as Trump’s victory became clear.
“Cracking 5% would depend on the scale of the expansion,” Desai said on the deficit. “The economy could probably take that.”
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