It’s time to get a little wonky on inflation.

Recently, I saw a chart that illustrated that 5y, 5y forward inflation – “what the Fed watches” – had recently risen to multi-year highs. While a true statement, that chart obscures a couple of important facts that are either useful, or interesting, or both. Although probably just interesting.

First, the fact that 5y, 5y forward inflation (for the non-bond people out there, this is the rate that is implied from the market for 5-year inflation expectations starting 5 years from now) has recently gone to new highs is interesting, but 5y5y breakevens are still at only 2.20% or so. Historically, the Fed has been comfortable with forward inflation (from breakevens) around 2.50%-2.75% even though its own target is 2% on core PCE (which works out to be something like 2.25%-2.35% on core CPI). That’s because yield curves are typically upward-sloping; in particular, inflation risk ought to trade with a forward premium because the inflation process exhibits momentum and so inflation has long tails. Ergo, long-dated inflation protection is much more valuable than shorter-dated inflation protection, not just because there is more uncertainty about the future but because the value of that option increases with time-to-maturity just like any option…but actually moreso since inflation is not naturally mean-reverting, unlike most financial products on which options are struck.

[As an aside, the fact that longer-term inflation protection is much more valuable than shorter-term inflation protection is one of the reasons it is so curious that the Treasury keeps wanting to add to the supply of 5-year TIPS, as it just announced it intends to do, even though the 5-year auction is usually the worst TIPS auction because not many people really care about 5 year inflation. On the other hand, 10-year TIPS auctions usually do pretty well and 30-year TIPS auctions often stop through the screens, because that’s very valuable protection and there isn’t enough of it.]