When Inflation-Protection Assets Fail to Protect

Inflation, the terrifying beast, was gradually put to sleep over the last 40 years. For a while, people had forgotten its presence. In fact, since 2008, most monetary and fiscal policies have been fighting deflation, not inflation. It is only natural that when it was woken up by a combination of COVID-19-induced supply chain destruction and monstrous fiscal stimulus, investors were not prepared. They soon found that most inflation-protection assets, such as Treasury inflation-protected securities (TIPS), real estate, commodities, gold, and even bitcoins lost money in that inflationary environment, mainly as a result of global central banks tightening monetary policies to fight inflation. In this article, the authors first study the rationale behind the ineffectiveness of traditional inflation-protection assets, then provide a solution based on a carefully designed structure using centrally cleared inflation swaps. With a small twist, the authors also propose a simple one-stop shop structure to match real liabilities for institutions such as pensions, endowments, and foundations. Lastly, for allocators who are concerned about the intrinsic leverage in a derivative-based strategy, the authors suggest a cheap tail risk hedging mechanism using oversupplied inflation options to mathematically contain the downside risk of our structure.