Know The Yield Curve Before Trading Interest Rates

Interest rates are the most important financial variable for the market and the economy. No matter what market you trade, you need to keep close watch on interest rate changes. Whether you trade currencies, stocks, futures, options, commodities, ETFs, bonds or invest in mutual funds or if you are real rich in a hedge fund, the return can be seriously affected by the interest rate changes. A Yield Curve is very important in finance. It gives you the picture of different interest rates in the economy. A Yield Curve is infact a relationship between the different interest rates and the time to maturity of different treasury bills, notes, bonds in the economy. When you trade the interest rates, you need to keep an eye on the yield curve!

Now as said before there are two types of interest rates in the economy; short term and long term. The return offered on the Treasury Bills is the short term interest rate while the return offered on the Treasury Notes and Bonds are long term interest rates. When you look at a Yield Curve these interest rates are plotted on the vertical axis with the time to maturity of these financial instruments on the horizontal axis. There can be three different shapes of a Yield Curve. The Normal Curve, The Flat Curve and the Inverted Curve. Let’s discuss these three different shapes now. On the Normal Curve, the short term interest rates are lower than the longer term interest rates as investors need a premium to invest long term. A Normal Curve represents normal economic activity where investors get rewarded for investing long term in the form of a higher long term interest rate on these financial instruments in the shape of a premium over the short term interest rates.

Now, most of the time you will come accross the Normal Yield Curve. But sometimes, you will find the Yield Curve to be Flat. When you find the Yield Curve to be Flat, it means that all the interest rates in the economy are equal. What this indicates is that economic activity is slowing down.

However, when the economy starts to go into a recession, you will suddenly find an Inverted Yield Curve. On an Inverted Yield Curve, the longer term interest rates are lower than the short term interest rates.What this mean is that the economy is slowing down and investors are reluctant to invest long term thinking it to be risky. An Inverted Yield Curve is a leading indicator of an economy doing down into a recession. When there is a financial crisis like that happened in the early part of 2008, you will find the Yield Curve to be Inverted. Investors are shying away from investing in long term projects in the economy.

If you want to trade interest rates short term than Eurodollars are the best instruments that you can trade. Eurodollars are well suited for small traders because of the low margin requirements. Eurodollars also tend to be less volatile and have a highly liquid market due to the large number of market participants. However, like any other futures contracts, Eurodollars position needs to be carefully monitored. Ten Year T Notes and T Bonds can be highly volatile. You can also trade options on these interest rates futures.

Trading interest rate futures is no different than trading anyother futures contract. If you haven’t traded futures before, a good idea would be to first paper trade these contracts for at least two months so that you get a feel of how these futures contracts gets traded and how the market behaves! Now, when you trade these interest rate futures contracts, you need to keep an eye on the market constantly. Futures trading can be risky and in a matter of few minutes you might get wiped out in the market and get a margin call from your broker.

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