Blackrock’s Treasury Fund TLT Falls to 22-Year Low

Remember 2004? It was the year that Facebook officially launched, Shrek 2 dominated the box office and, of course, Janet Jackson endured the most publicized wardrobe malfunction of all time. It was also the last time the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) traded this low.

Rising yields on long-term Treasurys pushed the price of the largest long-term bond fund to its lowest price in 22 years. TLT fell below $82 per share on Friday as risk-averse investors fled the asset. Higher yields on long-term bonds have been a steady trend over the past four years, and currently stem from scarcity caused by high demand for capital to fund the artificial intelligence buildout, as well as higher inflation expectations due to the war in Iran. 

“Investors are likely risk averse to owning longer-term Treasury debt right now,” said Jason England, a fixed income strategist at Simplify Asset Management. “Most people want to favor the front end or intermediate part of the duration curve right now, if you’re going to take any duration on at all.” 

Short Over Long 

The State Street SPDR Bloomberg 1-3 Month T-Bill ETF (BIL) has outpaced TLT over two-, three-, five- and even year-to-date periods, said Athanasios Psarofagis, an ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. It’s a sharp reversal from TLT’s heyday: Before 2022, when the inverse relationship between stocks and bonds still held, the fund thrived as a portfolio diversifier. “That was the golden era for TLT,” he said. “Some of the best years might be behind it.”

Here are some more numbers on the fund’s decline:  

• TLT has fallen more than 50% from its high of $171.11 in 2020. 
• The fund’s assets peaked at $64.5 billion, but have since fallen back to $41.6 billion, according to ETF.com data. 

Rate Expectations: Long-term bonds can have wild price swings, and traders have historically tried to bet on timing TLT to benefit from price increases after rate cuts. “If they really think rates are going to move a certain way, it’s almost like standing at the tail end of a seesaw,” said Psarofagis. “If someone jumps on it, you’re getting this giant move up.” Except everyone usually gets it wrong, he said. “It’s been something that has literally not worked for four years, so it’s still kind of baffling that it has the amount of assets that it does.”