Financial markets have already had an unusual year, but recent price action lately has been especially bizarre, according to Robin Brooks, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
In a Substack post on Tuesday titled “Super weird markets since Jackson Hole,” he traced the path of key assets since Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell opened the door to rate cuts in a speech at the annual central bank symposium last month.
“You’d have thought that would weigh on the Dollar, lift the S&P 500 and boost commodity prices across the board. But that hasn’t happened,” Brooks wrote. “The only thing that’s moved is gold, with a massive price rise of almost 10 percent.”
To be sure, stocks have rallied since his post as benign inflation data cleared the way for Fed rate cuts when policymakers meet on Tuesday and Wednesday. Gold prices have also marched higher, setting fresh highs along the way and closing Friday at $3,680.70 per ounce.
But the bond market has behaved more unexpectedly. Brooks noted the 30-year Treasury yield didn’t fall right after Powell’s speech but only turned lower after another bad jobs report was released two weeks later.
“The fact that the 30-year Treasury yield didn’t fall immediately is weird and worrying,” he added. “It took very weak payrolls to finally do that.”
In addition, while the dollar index has had some ups and downs, it has returned to about where it was before Powell’s speech, with Brooks calling that “counterintuitive” as expectations for Fed easing would typically bring it lower.
Meanwhile, bitcoin sold off after Jackson Hole but is also back where it started, even though cryptocurrencies have generally acted like risk assets in the past and previously rallied on rate-cut hopes.
“What does all this mean? Recent market moves suggest gold is the ultimate safe haven,” Brooks said. “Bitcoin is proving too volatile and speculative, so — as political pressure on the Fed mounts — markets gravitate to gold.”
Fears of a debt crisis in France and the U.K. have jolted global bond yields higher in recent weeks. Political gridlock in France in particular has dimmed hopes that Paris will rein in deficits anytime soon.
On Friday evening, Fitch downgraded France’s credit rating from AA- to A+, the lowest level ever for the eurozone’s second-largest economy, saying a major shift to fiscal discipline is unlikely.
It’s possible the crisis in France sent more investors looking for a safe haven toward the dollar, potentially explaining why the greenback has been stable, Brooks said.
After his post, other global events have stirred more geopolitical concerns that may also favor the dollar. Israel attacked Hamas leaders in Qatar, a close U.S. Mideast ally, sparking sharp backlash in the region and sending oil prices higher.
And Russian drones entered Polish airspace, forcing NATO allies to activate air-defense systems and deploy fighters jets that shot down the aircraft.
“The bottom line is that there’s a lot of things in markets that don’t currently hang together well at all,” Brooks said.
The key question is whether the rise in gold prices is sign that the dollar is losing its reserve currency status, though he thinks it’s just temporary noise and sees a reversion to the mean eventually.
In a note on Tuesday, Michael Brown, senior research strategist at Pepperstone, also noticed the odd market moves that have been going on.
But he said “the tell” is the dollar’s 10% decline year to date against other global currencies, which stems from President Donald Trump’s efforts to weaken Fed independence, worsen deficits, and reorder the global trading system.
“When you take all that into account, those market moves suddenly start to make a lot more sense,” Brown added. “Yes, the correlations are unusual. But, so is the macroeconomic environment, and so are the policy choices that continue to be made, as government spending runs away with itself across DM, rate cuts resume stateside, inflation risks remain tilted to the upside, and a potential economic re-acceleration looms now the initial trade/tariff uncertainty has (largely) been navigated.”
