Almost everyone — buyers of used cars, renters, homeowners with big heating bills and stock market investors — has been fretting about rising prices lately. But despite some of the fastest price increases in decades, investors in the Treasury bond market who are keenly attuned to inflation have been steadfast in their belief that it was a temporary phenomenon.That’s now changing.A key measure of the bond market’s expectations for inflation over the next five years — known as a break even — rose to a new high, briefly topping 3 percent on Friday. That meant investors expected inflation to average about 3 percent a year for the next five years, far higher than any time in the decade before the pandemic hit. Measures of inflation expectations over longer periods, such as over the next 10 years, also rose to multiyear highs.The expectations of bond investors matter because, historically, officials at the Federal …
