Thursday, February 5, 2015

The Power of Confound Interest

February 4, 2015
Taking Stock of Bonds, From Junk to Treasuries

On the other end of the bond-risk spectrum lie Treasuries. And long-dated Treasuries last year were up roughly 30%, confounding the conventional wisdom that proclaimed at the beginning of last year that the sector was dead because of expectations of rising rates. Instead, long-term rates fell during the year and long-term Treasuries trounced the broader stock market.

Conventional wisdom is to wisdom what confidence game is to game.

(The only real game in a confidence game is what a predator would call prey, lol. Sigh.)

5 comments:

mab said...

Perhaps common sense isn't so common. Or maybe it's the lifetime of institutional lies that blinds the majority.

dearieme said...

Yesterday Finland issued 5-year debt paying -0.017% p.a.

dearieme said...

I've just found this.
https://www.bondvigilantes.com/blog/2015/02/05/coming-bond-market-near-brave-new-world-zero-yield-corporate-bonds/

I wonder whether I should issue zero-coupon personal bonds? Who would buy?

Stagflationary Mark said...

mab,

It would be interesting to see how Wall Street would function if everyone had the same common sense.

How could trading even take place if everyone agreed on the price of everything?

Thank goodness so many financial experts make sure the public stays CONfused!

Stagflationary Mark said...

dearieme,

Nobody would buy your personal bonds individually, but perhaps you could combine yours with others and create a structured personal bond investment vehicle. Now that would probably sell, assuming the public has a short memory. Fairly safe assumption I think. For example, most seem to have already forgotten that the stock market can go both up and down.