It may, or may not have been the most sparsely attended US presidential inauguration of modern times – President Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer claims it was the best attended, but he would say that wouldn’t he, in the new post-truth world of populism. But one thing’s for sure: the inauguration prompted one of the busiest days on record in the Asian primary G3 debt markets.

Nine new issues priced two days ahead of Trump’s inauguration last Friday, and the outcomes of the trades looked remarkably “business-as-usual” for the issuers, which included old stalwarts like the Republic of the Philippines and South Korea’s Kexim. The most remarkable aspect of the new issues for these seasoned favourites of Asia primary G3 was the ability of the issuers to price at extremely tight levels to Treasuries.

In the Philippines’ case, the country’s debt office managed to equal its all-time low coupon print from last year – at 3.7% – despite the push-back in Treasury yields which has occurred since Trump won the election in November.

It seems that the rush of issuers to the market ahead of the inauguration places them in a different mindset from investors; after all, if a full-scale reversal of the Fed’s zero interest rate policy is on the cards, one would have expected a few of the new issues to have been priced extremely generously to comparables, or indeed for a few deals which had been unveiled with too aggressive price ambitions to have been pulled. Not so; issuers had the upper hand.

There are some explanations. The year had started in a veritable drought of new issuance and accounts had been hence starved of new paper; redemptions have been ongoing and matured debt needs to be replaced; and a large pocket of investors believe that a recession – which is long overdue on the basis of historical data going back 170 years – is on the cards, despite the bluster of “Trumponomics.”

The latter view is being proposed by the research teams of quite of few investment banks. There have been 83 consecutive months of US economic growth since the Global Financial Crisis, a record, based on data going back to 1854. Surely a recession looms on the basis of those data.

Of course, divergent opinions make a market, but you would have to think that the highly-sophisticated treasury teams who rushed to market ahead of Trump’s swearing in had the right read. Print now before having to pay much higher coupons later as Trumponomics, and its aim of revving the US economy to double its present rate of growth through splurging on infrastructure, kicks in.

If that is the right view, then investors will have to change their thinking. It could herald a return to the heyday of the floating rate note, which was last on a roll as a product in the late 1980s, in the context of a Fed rate tightening cycle. FRNs, together with par loans will be the best investment option in the face of Fed rate tightening and a reversing Treasury bond bull market.

Indeed, the par loan market in Asia has become ever more active on this investment view. Time to prepare for a major shift in investment thinking if Trumponomics should perchance deliver.

Jonathan Rogers is contributing editor for The Asset