1 for short-term bond demand-decrease explanation.

I think the animated yield curve is "estimated" or "implied" because of the interpolated yields along the line (there isn't a bond between 3 and 6 months, but the line implies there is one).

I, too, don't understand the purpose of the pink and blue shaded regions. I'm trying to wrack my brain because the animator issues economic advisory reports for a team of researchers so there must be a reason, right? I'm wondering if reaching out would be worthwhile, if 2014 is too long ago to remember, or if the animation was outsourced.

I love a prediction. Can we stipulate treasury.gov as an authorative source? They show rates of 2.92% for a two-year and 3.20% for a ten year T-bill, a gap of 0.28%. I don't know who calls the peak of a bull run, but NBER seems to have say-so over recession dating.

Yes, I love a prediction, too. My prediction: inversion of 10-year rates and 2-year rates + or - one month of February 2019, with a peak of the stock market (as measured by Google ticker for S&P 500? I'm open to suggestion) 12 months after with a one month margin of error (so if an inversion occurs in January 2019, a stock market maxima has to occur within December 2019 - February 2020) with an NBER-marked recession within 6 months hence.

I'm tempted to say that a stock market peak has to occur within the following year, rather than within a narrow 3-month band, but the data is pretty strong that the post-inversion stock market peaks occur a healthy amount of time after, so the prediction will stay as such.