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Comment by jeffreyrogers | Hacker News Reader

Funny seeing Matt Levine's column on HN. He's one of the only financial commentators who consistently has something interesting to say.

It's an interesting time to be in the markets. The steady decline of interest rates has helped keep asset prices high, but now interest rates are starting to come up again. That coupled with newly created wealth from developing countries trying to find a safe place to get a decent return has pushed future expected returns down so investors are struggling to find investments that will give the the returns they've been accustomed to.

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> Funny seeing Matt Levine's column on HN. He's one of the only financial commentators who consistently has something interesting to say.

I'm addicted to his writing and I generally hate financial markets. Reading his stuff is enjoyable, educational, unbiased and entertaining. I highly recommend any techies here who want to understand the financial world to read his stuff.

I used to read every column of his, but then Bloomberg started demanding I register...

I subscribed to his Money Stuff email list, and it shows up in its entirety in my inbox.

He just did a podcast with Tyler Cowen yesterday - its a good listen: https://soundcloud.com/conversationswithtyler/matt-levine-ty...

thanks for the podcast recommendation! surprised I'd never heard of it. are there others among your favorites?

There's one with Patrick Collison (Stripe cofounder) that people reading HN would probably find interesting. I've read the transcripts of a few others and they've all been interesting, but nothing in particular is jumping out at me.

> but now interest rates are starting to come up again

This appears to not matter at all in the "new normal". The 10y yield tapped 2.93% yesterday and still, everyone made a mad dash to bid up equities.

It should be noted that while the Fed is reducing its balance sheet this year, the BOJ, ECB, and PBOC's easing efforts are resulting in a net increase in global CB-led asset purchases.

Kuroda alone will likely be enough to keep risk assets elevated, regardless of what interest rates do.

is 2.93% really such a scary rate? It's still historically very low.

Well, it's a big change in a short time from 2.4%. It's more the first derivative[1] that's scary than the actual value.

Of course, the first derivative is only scary if you're expecting it to continue for a while. That's forecasting, or guesswork, or something besides just observing the current rate.

[1] "Derivative" in the calculus sense, not in the financial instrument sense.

Yeah, we're certainly in an interesting environment. It's funny to think that to anyone who entered the financial industry after 2008 this is normal.

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