Talk:Yield curve

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This is a great article. Congratulations to all the editors involved.

Reasons for failure were:

(I say we wait about a month, and resubmit in late March.) --Christofurio 20:59, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

Let's get rid of "stylized facts"
"Stylized facts" are stylistically horrible. Facts must be true, otherwise a statement is either a falsehood or an opinion. Which make "stylized facts" ... mere economic jargon.


 * I'm not totally disagreeing, but you could also argue that the term 'yield curve' is 'mere economic jargon'. The use of the term 'stylized fact' is widespread in economic literature, because so many behaviours are statistically inferred. It is very cumbersome to say something like "...under the conditions for which data exists thusfar, which may not be enough to make a robust statistical inference, bond yields of different maturities have tended to move together a statistically significant number of times, which we will now posit is a 'normal' market condition, and henceforth will refer to as a 'fact' and use as the basis for a model of the market under real conditions in conjunction with other similarly created suppositions that together will aid our understanding of how the complete model will react to various changing environs, with other additional caveats, many of which can be found in various studies of the matter." Tristanreid 22:15, 19 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I just removed one of these and then saw the discussion. I agree that the phrase "stylized facts" has a place, but not as used in this article.  For purposes of the discussion of the yield curve, there are certain observations that generally (but not always) hold true, and attempts to explain that observation. --66.28.243.126 (talk) 20:32, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Implicit Future Rates
I deleted the paragraph quoted below because it is inaccurate/oversimplified. I wanted to explain before I got in a fight. You cannot merely assume, as the original author did, that a 5% 1yr rate and a 5.5% 2 year rate implies a 6% end of year 2 rate. It could imply a market assumption that rates will skyrocket at the end of the year (thus a market predicted rate in excess of 5.5%) or it could assume a January first jump to 5.5% and thus a 5.5% market predicted rate. Additionally, the author forgot that long term investments are inherently more risky and thus require a higher risk premium. If the fed GUARANTEED rates would remain 4% for 10 years, you'd still see a curve in the yield curve. --Laxrulz777 21:52, 28 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Yield curves carry an implicit forecast of future short-term interest rates: for example if the annual yield on a 1-year bond is 5%, and on a 2-year bond is 5.5%, then the implicit yield (forward rate) in year 2 is
 * $$\frac{1.055^{2}}{1.05^{1}} - 1 = 6.00\%$$

(Implicit) FORWARD Rates
The above comment is wrong. The deleted section gives the formula for the Forward Rate. The article is incomplete without it. The (implied) Forward Rate is a fixture in fixed income calculations and the formula is based on a no-arbitrage argument.

Forward rates are extracted from the term structure and are implied by the spot rates at any given time. If a 2 year maturity bond is trading at a yield of r2 and a one-year bond trades at a yield of r1 and the investor in the one-year bond wants to reinvest for a second year after the one-year matures, in order to prevent arbitrage, both investments must be equal, and the following formula must hold


 * $$\frac{F}{(1+r_{2})^{2}}=\frac{F}{(1+r_{1})(1+f)}\Leftrightarrow f=\frac{(1+r_{2})^{2}}{(1+r_{1})}-1$$

where F is the Face value of the bond(s) and $$f$$ is the Forward rate. This is exactly the formula that the (too) clever commentator extracted from the article.

The entire article, as well as many other topics in fixed income, suffer from a lack of rigor and mathematical accuracy. This is disappointing, considering the progress made in mathematics on Wikipedia in recent years. There seem to be a number of people contributing who think that finance and financial formulas are a matter of opinion.

While I agree that mathematical finance is not an accuarate picture of the real world, there are standard formulas that belong to the corpus of knowledge and they should be included. Davidrising (talk) 20:13, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Dr. Gogas's comment on this article
Dr. Gogas has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"Although the article describes in length the evolution of the research on the yield curve up to 2000, it lacks more recent developments. The Nelson-Siegel model and the significance of level, slope and curvature of the yield curve in explaining the data generating process and forecasting future recessions."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

Dr. Gogas has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:


 * Reference : Gogas, Periklis & Papadimitriou, Theophilos & Matthaiou, Maria- Artemis & Chrysanthidou, Efthymia, 2014. "Yield Curve and Recession Forecasting in a Machine Learning Framework," DUTH Research Papers in Economics 8-2014, Democritus University of Thrace, Department of Economics.

ExpertIdeas (talk) 02:29, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

needs to be entirely rewritten
This article is repetitive, full of unexplained jargon, and doesn't really explain things very well.


 * +1, came to learn about the yield curve as a relatively informed layman and got 0 out of this article. Meerpirat (talk) 12:51, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
 * @User:Meerpirat, I quite agree. The lead is very awkward. The first sentence is a circular statement that just restates the obvious ("The yield curve is a curve..."), and the second sentence contains parentheticals that get in the way of the message: "(2 month, 2 year, 20 year, etc. ...)", "the relation between the (level of the) interest rate (or cost of borrowing)..." Also, the caption to the second graph, "2 to 10 year yield curve", is just plain wrong. That graph is not the yield curve itself; it's the spread between 2 year and 10 year Treasury rates, which is a tool for measuring the slope of the yield curve. I am about to post some changes to rectify these problems. And there's more work to be done. Cordially, BuzzWeiser196 (talk)
 * Edits made to the lead today at 15:11 Eastern time are mine. I forgot to log in when I saved them. BuzzWeiser196 (talk) 19:12, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Two issues: 1) Both "Significance of Slope and Shape" and "Relationship to the Business Cycle" explain reasons for normal and inverted yield curves. No need for repetition. These should be consolidated. 2) "Construction of the full yield curve from market data" says that the LIBOR curve is the most frequently used curve (with no inline citation to a reliable source). But the lead stresses that many investors watch the US Treasury yield curve. This should be reconciled. BuzzWeiser196 (talk) 13:06, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

First Graphic
I'd like to replace the intro graphic with https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yield_curve_20180513.png based on later data and easier to read.

Please also consider using this graphic as well: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_treasury_yields.png

Lee De Cola (talk) 01:56, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Rewording explanation of inverted curve
The article contains this sentence:

"Occasionally, when lenders are seeking long-term debt contracts more aggressively than short-term debt contracts, the yield curve 'inverts', with interest rates (yields) being lower for the longer periods of repayment so that lenders can attract long-term borrowing."

Interest rates are set by the issuer (i.e., borrower), at the lowest rate judged necessary to attract the desired lending. It's confusing to talk about lenders trying to attract borrowers. I think the relationship is clearer if expressed this way:

"Occasionally, when lenders are seeking long-term debt contracts more aggressively than short-term debt contracts, the yield curve 'inverts', with interest rates (yields) being lower for the longer periods of repayment, because borrowers find it easier to attract long-term lending."

I'm making this change, but I'm far from an expert here, so I'd welcome correction from anyone more knowledgeable. JamesMLane t c 20:13, 25 June 2018 (UTC)