Okay, I didn’t coin the phrase for this piece’s title—that was NY Yankee great Yogi Berra who came up with that line. Likewise, I didn’t come up with “it isn’t over until the fat lady sings” (Wagner opera), or “was it over when the German’s bombed Pearl Harbor?” (Bluto Blutarsky—Animal House). Regardless of one’s epitaph of choice, bond investors are slowly coming to the realization that historically—and by “historically” I mean every Fed rate hike cycle of the past 50-years—longer term bond yields tend to peak plus-or-minus a month around the LAST Fed rate hike of the cycle. And, in each of those previous rate hike cycles, the Fed wasn’t done until the targeted Fed Funds rate exceeded the peak inflation rate for that cycle, and almost always exceeded it by a lot.
