Let’s have some fun…. Bond Style

We have been shaken, and the markets are stirred. Why not have fun in our final days? When asked what I’d do if I was on a plane that was going to crash, my simple answer is ask somebody for a shag and drink champagne until it all goes bang, what a pity that during the bond market equivalent of this all we can do is shake in our boots, I say crack open the bubbly.

O.k. So we can’t afford to drink champagne, and with any flight/sex innuendo I’ll become the blog version of Prenderville so we’ll leave that alone too.

What could we do with our bond market to sort out this mess? The issue we currently have is that there is capital depreciation on our bonds leading to higher yields, when you hear that our yields hit 8% it doesn’t mean that we are paying more, it means people are selling at a loss and new buyers get a higher yield on the indexed mix of bonds (Read More →

Irish debt, third most likely to default in the world?

Credit Default Swaps hit a record high yesterday for Irish Sovereign Debt. CNBC spoke to Brian Cowen on this topic yesterday, our Student Protests got a mention at the very start, Mr. Cowen believes this is short term sentiment, and while you can use a cyclical argument against Ireland, there is a secular argument about our debt: that it will be more expensive in the future (forever).

Using credit default swaps we are placing ahead (as in more risky) than Pakistan, Argentina and Iraq! Behind only Venezuela and Greece, interesting times….

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Recent Irish bond yields explained in plain English.

We are not issuing bonds, so the cost of servicing our debt has not magically risen to ‘7%’ because we are not borrowing at that rate, what is happening is all in the secondary market.

What that means: The primary market is when the bond is first issued at par (100) and with a coupon (for instance 3%). When a bond is issued the main concern of a bond buyer is getting your capital back (that par value of 100) and it trumps the yield in terms of importance, so you regularly see people buy debt at very low rates from those most likely to pay it back, Microsoft recently issued a bond at 0.8%!

That is where the Ireland story gets interesting, our bond yield is not 7% because we issued it at that yield or interest rate, it is 7% because people are sacrificing their capital to get out of the trade. That means they don’t believe they will get their money back at the end and …

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YTM: Yield to Maturity and Bond Pricing

Sometimes talking about present values, par and yield to maturity will catch even a well versed practitioner off guard, but to see a pricing model in action helps and that is precisely what this video does – in this clip an assumed future rate is discounted into present values and we arrive at the bond price. Well worth watching (twice!).

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Bill Gross of Pimco talks about the deficit in the USA

Bill Gross, known as ‘Mr. Bond’ runs the largest bond fund in the world, in this video he talks about many of the issues facing the economy under the new Obama presidency. Bill Gross is a fascinating character who started his careers as a professional gambler I always enjoy listening to his views on the market which he does with an intersting mix of macro/micro/common sense views.

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