Bond markets already looking past summer as Jackson Hole looms, says Tradition Dubai’s Steven Major

It’s mid-August, and the bond market has apparently decided that beach season is over. Steven Major, global macro advisor at Tradition (Dubai) Ltd, says the fixed-income world is already laser-focused on the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium, scheduled for August 27-29.

Major, who joined Tradition Dubai in December 2025 after spending 24 years at HSBC, has been one of the more closely watched voices in fixed income this year. His assessment: the long end of the yield curve is moving higher because markets are slowly accepting that developed-market central banks aren’t rushing to cut rates anytime soon.

The yield curve tells a story of caution

Since early February 2026, the 2s10s yield curve has flattened by 17 basis points in the US, 21 basis points in the UK, and 23 basis points in the Eurozone.

UK 2-year gilt yields sit at 4.12% as of August 17, well above where most economists peg the neutral rate.

Across the Channel, Eurozone 2-year yields range from 2.43% in Germany to 2.67% in Italy. The spread between those two numbers reflects the persistent gap in how markets price sovereign credit risk within the bloc.

Why Jackson Hole matters more than usual

This year’s theme, “Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy,” might sound academic, but bond traders will be parsing every word from Fed officials for signals about whether rate cuts are genuinely on the table for the US before year-end.

Major has been setting up this conversation for months. In February 2026, he discussed the possibility of US rate cuts on Bloomberg. By March, his tone had shifted toward flagging stagflation risks. Middle Eastern geopolitical tensions have kept a floor under inflation expectations through energy price channels, making it harder for central banks to justify cuts even as growth indicators soften.

Short-duration strategies and the new playbook

With short-term yields offering attractive returns and the long end subject to upward pressure from sticky inflation and uncertain policy, the trade that’s been working is staying short, collecting yield, and waiting for clarity. When UK 2-year gilts are paying 4.12% and the curve keeps flattening, the opportunity cost of patience is fairly low.

Major’s transition from HSBC to Tradition Dubai reflects a shift in where market intelligence is being generated and consumed, as Dubai has positioned itself as an increasingly important node in the flow of capital between East and West.

Major’s core observation: the long end of the curve is repricing because the market is beginning to accept that “higher for longer” isn’t just a slogan. It’s a baseline scenario that could persist well into 2027 if central banks don’t see convincing evidence that inflation is sustainably declining.

Any discussion at the symposium of digital currencies, tokenized assets, or real-time settlement infrastructure has the potential to reshape how markets think about the plumbing of the financial system—plants seeds for structural shifts that fixed-income investors will need to factor into their models over time.

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