Bond rout leaves bears on wrong side of central banks

New York

THE biggest global bond rout in two years has put investors in a dangerous place: challenging the world's most influential central banks.

The truism "don't fight" the Federal Reserve has morphed into hedge fund manager David Tepper's recent caution against taking on the "four Feds": the European Central Bank, Bank of Japan and People's Bank of China, in addition to the US central bank.

While international debt markets have lost about US$433 billion and yields have spiked from the US to Germany, monetary policymakers show no sign of an imminent increase in the price of money. In Europe and Japan, central bankers are still conducting quantitative easing. Wit…