I spent the better part of last month calling for a bond rally.

Duration was a falling knife, but the long-end selloff felt overdone and although an obstinately hawkish Fed put a floor under short-end yields, policymakers’ rhetoric was shifting in favor of skipping the final hike, setting up a rally at the first real sign of macro softness.

Fast forward a handful of weeks and bonds are on track for a blockbuster month. I highlight this not to say “I told you so,” but rather because the moves really are remarkable.

Recall that the largest Treasury ETF became the go-to product for anyone looking to “fight the Fed” without putting a lot of creative effort into devising a strategy. That vehicle, which saw huge inflows this year despite (and in part because of) a long-running drawdown that at one point exceeded 50%, is headed for a double-digit monthly gain.

November of 2023 counts as the third-best month for the product since November of 2008, two months after Lehman collapsed.

It’s notable that a simple long-end ETF may end up besting the S&P in November, a month during which US equities stormed to an 8.5% gain.

Note also that a Bloomberg gauge of global sovereign and corporate debt is up damn near 5% this month. November will likely count as the single-best month for that index since the end of 2008.

You can thank expectations of a policy pivot from the Fed and ECB, but also cooler macro data and growing evidence that this disinflation is for real — that this isn’t another “head fake,” as Jerome Powell described previous false dawns.

Recall that the three-month long-end selloff which rocked markets from August through October put US government debt in jeopardy of an unprecedented third annual loss.

It now seems very likely that Treasurys will avoid that fate. One index was up nearly 2% for the year after Wednesday.

But barring a stupendous December, this won’t be an “all’s well that ends well” story. This was a roller coaster year for bond investors, and the late-summer/early-fall rout was a gut punch for duration dip-buyers and everyone who began 2023 peddling sundry “year of the bond” narratives.

So, up, down or flat this time next month, 2023 will be remembered as another volatile year for the “safest” assets on the planet and the deepest, most liquid market in the world.

As it stands currently, the 2024 narrative is that bonds may well offer stock-like returns. They did in November.