2022 was a year of extreme volatility for both stocks and bonds and while things have quieted down a bit this year, volatility in the US Treasury market remains extremely elevated. The top chart below shows the average daily percentage move in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) and the iShares 20+ Year US Treasury ETF (TLT) over a rolling 200-trading day period. Heading into 2022, volatility in both asset classes was very low after spiking to extremes in the early days of COVID, but once the Fed started to hint that it was starting to "think about thinking about" hiking rates, all hell broke loose. While the average daily change in SPY over a rolling 200-day period never exceeded its peak from the COVID crash, volatility in long-term US treasuries, as proxied by TLT, rose above +/-1% to its highest level since the first half of 2012. When treasuries are swinging up and down (mostly down) 1% on a daily basis, that's a very volatile environment!

While average daily swings in both stocks and bonds have declined this year, volatility has been much slower to subside in the treasury market than in the stock market. The second chart below shows the spread between the average daily percentage move in both ETFs (TLT minus SPY), and as of last Friday, the spread rose to 0.237%, which outside of ten trading days in August 2015, is the widest gap between the two ETFs since TLT was first launched in 2003. Elevated volatility in bonds usually accompanies volatility in stocks, but the current degree of volatility in the bond market relative to stocks is rarely this high.

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