Tag: bonds

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Why Do Short-Term Bonds Yield More Than Long-Term Bonds? Who Would Buy Long-Term Bonds Now?

A couple astute observers noticed something about interest rates in my last video. If you missed that video, it can be found here.

Click on the image below to watch today’s short video answering the questions about why short-term rates are higher than long-term rates, who would buy long-term bonds in this scenario and what else does an “inverted yield curve” tell us about the economy? This one is a bit more casual as I wasn’t expecting to make a video today and threw it together fairly quickly. You’d be amazed at how much time goes into even a short video like this!

Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

Continue reading “Why Do Short-Term Bonds Yield More Than Long-Term Bonds? Who Would Buy Long-Term Bonds Now?”

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Average Retail Investors Down Over 35% in 2022

Executive Summary

  1. Retail investors were down over 35% on average in 2022 as they chased into overvalued and speculative assets that did well in prior periods.
  2. 2022 was generally difficult for even conservative and balanced portfolios.
  3. Wall Street insists on performing the fool’s errand of making12-month return forecasts and got it very wrong in 2022.
  4. 12-year outlook for stocks and bonds.

Continue reading “Average Retail Investors Down Over 35% in 2022”

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Bonds Haven’t Been Here In Over A Decade (And the impact on clients’ financial projections)

Last night the U.S. 10-Year Treasury yield did something it hasn’t done since 2010… it hit 4%.

Just two years ago the 10-year was yielding a measly 0.5%! It’s certainly been a wild, parabolic move in rates.

See chart below of 10-Year Treasury Rate since the eve of the Great Financial Crisis…

Continue reading “Bonds Haven’t Been Here In Over A Decade (And the impact on clients’ financial projections)”

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The Bad News is Interest Rates Increased. The Good News is Interest Rates Increased.

Bond prices go down when interest rates rise and vice versa. How is that? Well, think of it this way.

Imagine you bought a 10-year Treasury bond with $1,000,000 at the end of last year when the interest rate was 1.5%. That implies $15,000 of annual interest payments over the next ten years until maturity at which point you also get your $1,000,000 principal back.

However, the interest rate for 10-year treasuries has since risen to ~3.5%. So, who’s going to want the 1.5% bond when they can go buy essentially the same 10-year bond and get 3.5%? Nobody. Therefore, the price of the 1.5% bond must fall to attract buyers so that the yield-to-maturity is aligned with prevailing interest rates. Continue reading “The Bad News is Interest Rates Increased. The Good News is Interest Rates Increased.”

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Quarterly Market Update: All That Glitters is Gold…

This has been a strange period in that both traditional bonds AND stocks are down around 7%-8% simultaneously. Historically, if stocks were down like this bonds would at least be holding up, if not appreciating, and vice versa.

A couple months ago I wrote a commentary about why we own treasuries in portfolios referencing the fact that since 1928, treasuries and stocks have only been down simultaneously in the same year three times! Historically, stocks and treasuries have been great complimentary, non-correlated assets. In fact, they have about a negative 0.40% correlation.

At this point, if nothing were to change for the rest of the year, we could have our fourth year in almost a century where both bonds and stocks are down simultaneously. Continue reading “Quarterly Market Update: All That Glitters is Gold…”