Any discussion on the 10 year should begin with the statement that it is the flight to quality asset.  In a crisis prices spike up.  With that in mind, for speculators to be short, is to be long crisis risk.  Finally, in an upward sloping yield curve you are paying to be long crisis risk.  Usually investors pay to protect against crisis.

So what is happening here?  First, trend following models are short the 10 year.  This is the opposite positioning that enriched them for 30 years.  And they are uncomfortable.  Barlow is right that they will unload fast, putting as much weight on short term signals.

This means that investors should be weary of buying bonds until the futures imbalance subsides.  In terms of equity investors, it is another signal to look at cheap puts on the S&P, perhaps to cycle out of stocks that move on dividend rates and to move into names that do well in inflationary times. Or sit pat and take a long term view.