“The House” won’t win. Not this time.

According to nearly 200 fund managers who participated in the September edition of BofA’s monthly poll, Scott Bessent’s Treasury buybacks won’t succeed in bringing down longer-end US Treasury yields.

Asked about “the most probable outcome” of Bessent’s decision to — and you’ll pardon the derisive characterization — hijack the buyback program in the service of Donald Trump’s political imperatives, nearly half of professional capital allocators said the gambit will have no impact.

As the figure above shows, another ~third said the effort will be an outright failure and just 16% said it’ll succeed in bringing about durable relief for the long-end.

This is where I’m obliged to say Bessent’s already failed. Past tense. Regardless of what happens from here, 30-year yields retraced a modest decline in the weeks following Bessent’s August 19 announcement of the upsized buybacks and 10-year US yields this week breached 5% on their way to the highest levels since 2007.

To be fair, the US isn’t alone among G7 countries grappling with the highest borrowing costs in decades. As noted here first thing Tuesday morning, this is a global issue.

Apropos, a “disorderly” rise in bond yields took the number one spot on this month’s biggest tail-risk list in the BofA poll (figure on the left, below).

As the figure on the right shows, respondents were a net 48% Underweight bonds this month, the biggest UW since May of 2022.

“Investors have been UW bonds for the past 17 months,” BofA’s Michael Hartnett remarked.

Asked what would catalyze a major shift out of stocks and into government bonds, more than a quarter of respondents said they’d need to see yields rise to more attractive levels — like, say, 6% on the US long bond.