Markets are not acting weird: They are sending a loud message, quietly

This isn’t volatility. It’s rejection.

In the second week of March 2020, as news of COVID-19 began to spread rapidly across the globe, stock markets took a nervous plunge. It wasn’t just a correction—it was a global downswing. On March 12th, U.S. markets fell so sharply that headlines across the world dubbed it ‘Black Thursday.’ Major indices dropped by nearly 10% in a single day.

But what made this moment extraordinary wasn’t just the scale of the selloff—it was the total abandonment of everything. Investors didn’t just flee equities. They sold bonds, gold, and even Bitcoin. It was a mad dash for cash—a raw, primal liquidation unlike anything seen in recent history.

And yet, despite the panic, the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield never rose above 1%. That was the depth of fear: investors still saw Treasurys as a final line of refuge. Even during a global margin call, the bond market retained its role as a safe haven.

Now fast forward to early 2025, and take a look at what’s happening to yields today.

Even that modest spike in yields back in March 2020 was seen as catastrophic at the time—so much so that the Federal Reserve came out swinging, announcing it would buy an unlimited amount of government bonds to stabilize the market. The message was clear: the Fed would do whatever it took to restore confidence. Yields dropped fast—and stayed below 1% for months.

But this time? The markets are behaving in strange, almost inverted ways.

This isn’t a mad dash for cash. Gold prices are soaring. In fact, gold has been climbing almost daily since Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, Elon Musk, and their cohort began reshaping policy from inside the Oval Office. The more they talk, the more they act—the higher gold goes.

That’s not fear of deflation or a market crash. That’s fear of something deeper: inflation, instability, or even the breakdown of U.S. fiscal credibility.

Alright, let’s play devil’s advocate for a moment. Suppose this isn’t about the United States. Let’s assume—just for the sake of argument—that global investors have suddenly turned sour on bonds in general. If that were the case, we’d expect to see a global bond rout. Yields should be skyrocketing everywhere, not just in the U.S.

But that’s not what’s happening.