bonds

The health crisis that combined elements of the Spanish flu pandemic, the Great Depression and the GFC helped redefine what fiscal and monetary policies can achieve....

In the AFR today I write that markets are focused on what the Reserve Bank of Australia’s Governor Phil Lowe and Deputy Governor Guy Debelle decide regarding how they...

The RBA's dilemma is very neatly explained by these charts, which are screen-shots from our internal systems (see below). They show that the interest rates on both...

It was English writer Rudyard Kipling who famously wrote in his poem "If" of the value of "keeping your head when all about you are losing theirs". In a similar vein,...

In the AFR I write that after experiencing the mother of all “known unknowns” via this awful, one-in-100 year pandemic, you’d be brave to venture into the forecasting...

In a development that could rain on the parade of bullishness that has enveloped global markets, the median correlation across nine types of global risk...

The past year has not smiled on forecasters. Making predictions about 2021 therefore demands even more humility than usual. Covid-19 quickly made our concerns 12...

Investors could be forgiven for missing the RBA’s latest cut that saw the local cash rate plumb new depths of 0.1%, given competing headlines from the Melbourne Cup...

Income from all asset classes has been declining for over a decade, and accelerated this year since COVID took hold. From cash to fixed income, property to dividend...

Henrietta Howland (“Hetty”) Green (1834-1916) exemplifies the practice of investment that Benjamin Graham pioneered in the 1930s, Warren Buffett has advocated since...

Had the Australian population agreed with the mainstream press that the FY21 edition of the Commonwealth Budget was the “most anticipated” in years, then they would...

It's a relatively unknown asset class locally, but convertible bonds, which combine characteristics of both equities and bonds, held up remarkably well during the...

ASX listed debt trusts are trading at material discounts to the value of their underlying assets, which presents potential opportunities for investors to derive...

The last 30-40 years has seen a dramatic shift down in interest rates for much of the developed world. For example, the ten-year government bond yields in Australia...

As a manager of high grade bonds, we are quite amused to see so many comments of late regarding bonds and yields, making it difficult for investors to distinguish...

They say justice is slow as well as blind: ‘Justice limps along but gets there in the end’ - Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Trends in financial markets can be like that,...

I’m often asked why I'm fixated on bonds rather than following the herd with shares and cash. I blame this fixation on my age and sentiment. I am also a control...

When COVID-19 hit Australia in March, credit spreads across the whole investment grade bond market responded by migrating wider and prices headed lower. We saw this as...

I’m often surprised how many investors take no notice of what is securing their money (aka collateral), when they happily lend their life savings out to any Tom, Dick...

August was a horrible month for anyone carrying interest rate duration risk with the benchmark AusBond Composite Bond Index suffering a decent -0.42% loss in the month...