When Bonds Go Kaboom!
We’re not the only ones giving Neanderthal advice about holding on to physical cash. British newspaper the Telegraph reports:
The manager of one of Britain’s biggest bond funds has urged investors to keep cash under the mattress. Ian Spreadbury, who invests more than £4bn of investors’ money across a handful of bond funds for Fidelity, is concerned that a “systemic event” could rock markets, possibly similar in magnitude to the financial crisis of 2008…
The best strategy to deal with this, he said, was for investors to spread their money widely into different assets, including gold and silver, as well as cash in savings accounts. But he went further, suggesting it was wise to hold some “physical cash,” an unusual suggestion from a mainstream fund manager.
The Fuse Is Lit
The markets seem to be in wait-and-see mode. Yesterday, we were waiting to see what happens in Greece. Today, we wait to see what happens in the bond markets. We watch them like we watch a stick of dynamite. For a long time, it might sit there… silent… still…
Then all of a sudden – kaboom!
At the end of January, it looked as though bond yields had finally found their bottom. With $5 trillion of sovereign debt trading at negative yields, bond prices began to fall. And yields, which move in the opposite direction to prices, started to rise.
Not for the first time did we think: The fuse is lit!
We were 33 years old when this bond market made its last turn. The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond hit a high of almost 15% in 1982. Yields have been trending downward ever since. If we had only imagined what would happen next!
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