2016年3月28日 星期一

If Every Bond's a Winner, Why So Many Losers?

睇清債券市場的風險才好買賣, 而借錢買債券一樣有更大的風險 !

見到開始有一班人轉投資債券, 認為是必賺, 但到債市爆煲時, 又會成班人輸錢 !

所以分散投資才可保安全, 唔曬一次過輸身家 !

而在一個不穩定的波動市, 借錢投資是加大自已的輸數, 因為就連歐美專家都唔睇好來緊幾年的投資回報 !

本網誌投資債券手冊

www.bloomberg.com

By Lisa Abramowicz

If you bought bonds at the end of last year and just hung onto them, you probably have a little extra spending money in your pocket. In some cases, you may have cashed in big time.

Gain in Longer-Dated U.S. Treasuries This Year 7.6%

Brazilian government bonds, for example, are up more than 10 percent so far this year. Russian sovereign debt has gained more than 4 percent, as have Japanese government bonds. Junk bonds globally are up more than 3 percent, while longer-dated U.S. Treasuries have generated a 7.6 percent return.

Lower for Longer

Yields on longer-dated U.S. government bonds have fallen significantly this year
The list goes on and on. The $47 trillion Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Broad Market Index has gained almost 3 percent in 2016, the biggest gain on record for a similar period in data going back to 1997. That has resulted in more than a trillion dollars' worth of market gains, with just a few pockets of losses here and there.

Booming Bonds

Bonds around the world are doing amazingly well. So why are debt investors down?

This is great, right? Bond buyers are probably feeling pretty good about themselves, cashing in some chips, perhaps popping a little champagne. Or so you would think.

You’d be wrong. Debt traders seem pretty miserable, even more so than usual.

Bond markets have stopped making sense. Trading is uninspiring or confusing. Prices are flipping and flopping, especially among riskier securities. This is because central bankers are driving almost all of the action, making it incredibly unpredictable. The European Central Bank decided to start buying corporate bonds, and the region's credit markets suddenly experienced unprecedented distortions. Japan's central bank has joined Europe in experimenting with negative-rate policies, and the region's debt increasingly charges investors to hold it. The Fed may raise its rates, or not, and markets whirl in response.

The result is that returns at nontraditional bond funds are slightly negative on average this year, and some have lost even more. The $82.5 million Altegris Fixed Income Long Short fund is down more than 8 percent and the Highland Opportunistic Credit Fund has lost more than 6 percent year to date, according to data compiled by Morningstar and Bloomberg. Hedge funds have struggled, particularly in Europe, with Oceanwood Capital Management’s main $2.1 billion hedge fund losing 8.1 percent through March 12 this year as just one example, according to Bloomberg News reporters Saijel Kishan and Nishant Kumar.

And then you have banks, which are racing to cut staff in the wake of fading trading profits, and insurance companies, which are struggling to generate sufficient returns on their assets.

So who's reaping the spoils of this year's bond rally? Well, the big winners are central banks of developed nations like Japan and the U.S. along with the ECB. They own a lot of the sovereign debt that has experienced the biggest gains, so they win on that front. (For example, the Federal Reserve earned about $100 billion last year on the heels of its $4.5 trillion war chest of income-producing assets.)

And then there are companies that are borrowing at extremely low rates. European bonds of Siemens and Royal Dutch Shell, for example, are now trading with such high prices that they effectively have negative yields. Or, in other words, investors are basically paying for the privilege of lending to these highly rated companies. (And one of them is an oil company. Go figure.)

And, of course, some fund managers did get it right. But even for those who have timed the market correctly, it's getting more difficult for them to quickly cash out. If any big investors were to try to liquidate their holdings right now, there's a good chance the market would move away from them, diminishing their returns in relatively thin trading. And if a central banker decided to come up with a new surprise that disrupted markets once again, they could easily be on the wrong side of the trade again.

So despite the latest rally, bond investors are feeling insecure. The gains can quickly turn to losses. And in any case, a lot of the moves are just paper gains and losses, reinforcing the sense that there's so much funny money around that it's hard to know what's real.

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