NEWPORT BEACH, CA—In 2011, CBRE's National Retail Partners – West (NRP-West) has introduced its Pin the Yield on the Treasury contest. The idea was simple: Make your best estimate where the US 10-Year Treasury yield would land by year's end.

That contest is still going strong today, so we caught up with the firm's EVP, Philip Voorhees, about his personal predictions and on what the real question is about the treasury yield.

GlobeSt.com: What is influencing or impacting the Treasury Yield for 2018?
Philip Voorhees: The real question may be, what does NOT influence the 10-Year Treasury Yield in 2018? That's the incredible thing about the US 10YT: The yield the 10YT pays (determined by its price) effectively assimilates all of the available data about economic growth and/or contraction, political risk and/or stability. For example, Russia's alleged poisoning of former spy Sergei Skirpal and his daughter led to the ouster of Soviet diplomats from NATO ally countries, including the United States. Or, the US imposing trade tariffs on Chinese goods. China is a massive owner of US debt, and if sufficiently perturbed, may elect to sell this debt at market prices. If you are a global allocator of capital (or, just a wealthy person focused on your investments), this series of events may (or may not) cause you to feel the world is riskier, at which point you would buy the US 10YT, the “risk free” investment yield, as a safe haven. Of course, other investors – with different or better market information – could choose differently. The 10YT is effectively a global barometer of risk, adjusted by the fraction of a second by the world's most informed market participants.