Global investors are still trading as though the AI boom mattered more than the bond market. They may be about to discover the opposite is true.
The most important threat to Asian equities is no longer tariffs, China’s slowdown or even geopolitics alone. It’s the collapse of the zero-rate world that made the entire post-2008 investment regime possible.
Bond markets are, I suspect, beginning to overpower the AI trade.
For more than 15 years, global markets operated inside a system built on suppressed sovereign yields, cheap capital and structurally low inflation.
Central banks distorted the price of money so aggressively that investors were pushed deeper into equities, tech, and speculative assets simply to generate returns.
This framework currently appears to be fracturing.
The world is shifting from a deflationary globalization regime into an inflationary geopolitical one.
Globalization suppressed labor costs, expanded supply chains, lowered production costs and helped central banks maintain ultra-low rates for decades. However, that model is breaking apart under the pressure of tariffs, industrial policy, defense spending, supply-chain nationalism and geopolitical rivalry.
Markets, I believe, are still underestimating how profound a transition this is.
US Treasury yields are climbing sharply again. The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield has surged to 4.631%, its highest level since February 2025. The 30-year Treasury yield has moved above 5.15%.
But the more consequential story is unfolding in Japan.
Japan’s 30-year government bond yield has climbed above 4.2% for the first time on record. The 10-year Japanese government bond yield has risen to levels not seen since 1996.
Most investors are still failing to grasp the significance.
Japan exported deflation to the global economy for decades. Ultra-low Japanese yields pushed enormous pools of institutional capital into overseas bonds, US Treasuries, emerging-market debt and global equities.
As such, Japanese liquidity became one of the hidden pillars supporting the modern financial system.
But now the direction is reversing.
Japan is no longer exporting deflation. It’s beginning to export higher yields back into global markets.
This will change the plumbing of international capital flows.
If Japanese insurers and pension funds can suddenly secure meaningful returns at home, they no longer need to assume the same level of foreign risk abroad. Even a partial repatriation of Japanese capital would tighten global liquidity conditions significantly.
Asian markets are uniquely exposed to this shift because they sit directly at the intersection of tech concentration, export dependence and energy vulnerability.
Taiwanese and South Korean tech equities are still being priced for a liquidity environment that no longer exists. The AI rally has created the illusion that earnings growth can indefinitely outrun sovereign borrowing costs.
Yet history teaches us that bond markets eventually win that argument.
Investors can now earn more than 5% in long-dated US Treasuries with materially lower risk than many equity sectors currently priced for perfection.
This changes asset allocation globally.
The concentration of gains inside a narrow group of AI-linked stocks has masked growing fragility underneath broader equity markets. Expensive growth assets remain heavily dependent on assumptions formed during the era of free money.
Bond markets are beginning to dismantle those assumptions.
The Middle East conflict is accelerating the process.
Brent crude has climbed above $110 a barrel as the Iran war intensifies and risks to Gulf energy infrastructure rise again. Asia remains especially vulnerable because the region still depends heavily on imported energy.
Japan, South Korea and India absorb inflation shocks through energy prices far more directly than the United States. Higher oil prices feed rapidly into manufacturing and transport costs, food inflation and consumer demand across the region.
At the same time, governments are borrowing on a wartime scale.
Japan is reportedly preparing additional debt issuance to finance emergency fiscal spending linked to the conflict. The US continues running enormous deficits despite elevated yields and persistent inflation. Europe is ramping up defense spending just as fiscal pressures intensify across the continent.
Investors are increasingly questioning whether sovereign debt trajectories remain sustainable in a structurally higher-rate environment.
This is why the bond selloff matters far beyond fixed income markets themselves.
The post-2008 investment model depended on the assumption that liquidity would remain abundant; inflation, contained; and capital, structurally cheap. Bond markets are now challenging all three simultaneously.
Asian investors should pay close attention to which markets adapt best.
India continues to benefit from demographics, domestic consumption and strategic manufacturing expansion. Indonesia and Vietnam remain positioned to attract supply-chain diversification and industrial investment. Singapore’s role as a regional financial safe haven is likely to strengthen during periods of geopolitical volatility.
But broad Asian equities remain highly sensitive to global liquidity conditions, sovereign borrowing costs and dollar strength.
The era of free money inflated virtually every major asset class simultaneously.
The regime replacing it will be far more selective, more volatile and far less forgiving.
Investors still trading Asia as though liquidity remained infinite are perhaps positioning for a world that will no longer exist.
Nigel Green is the deVere Group CEO and founder.
