A propitious day in our era of negative-yield pandemic.
For the first time ever, Germany sold 10-year bonds with a zero-percent
coupon today. It sold these “Bunds” at a price that was above face value. So
not only do investors not get a coupon payment, however minuscule, they’re
also not getting all their capital back when the bonds are redeemed in 10
years at face value.
So on this propitious day in our era of negative-yield pandemic, these
Bunds in the €4.038 billion issuance produced a negative yield of -0.05% and
no coupon payments.
The only way buyers can make money on these things is if the yield drops
deeper into the negative, and if they sell the bonds at this
lower yield and thus at a higher price well before the maturity date –
because on the maturity date, these bonds are worth their face value, not a
cent more, no matter what the interest rate may be.
Buyers that hang on to these bonds until maturity, which is what many
buyers have to do to meet their needs – such as pension funds, insurance
companies, etc. – are guaranteed a capital loss plus zero interest
income, topped off by the loss of purchasing power due to 10 years’ worth of
inflation.
If rates rise, traders will lose a ton of money, and those holding the
bonds to maturity will also lose money. So this is a royal rip-off.
But no problem. In the secondary markets, 10-year Bunds trade today with a
yield of negative -0.14%.
These 10-year Bunds are used as a benchmark for pricing other European
securities. Hence, the guaranteed losses will reverberate through the
investment environment.
By now, the ever growing global pile of bonds with negative yields has
reached about $13 trillion.
Why would anyone be this stupid? Why would so many investors be so stupid?
Why would the biggest buyers of this rip-off – institutional investors who
manage other people’s money – be so stupid? No one knows. “Central banks made
us do it,” they’ll say afterwards as an excuse.
Bond specialist Jeffrey Gundlach, CEO of DoubleLine Capital, has another
phrase to describe the phenomenon: “Mass psychosis”:
“There’s something of a mass psychosis going on related to the so-called
starvation for yield,” he said during a webcast yesterday, according to Bloomberg.
“Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like investments where if you’re right
you don’t make any money.”
In theory, at least, rates can rebound. But Gundlach doesn’t expect that to happen quickly. He said it might take till next year before the 10-year Treasury yield will once again exceed 2%. It’s now at 1.46%.
Gundlach offered another gem, this one about a potential bank bailout to deal with the European banking crisis, according to Bloomberg:
Policy responses to insolvency concerns for European banks are likely to be “bond unfriendly,” creating inflation “that would take everybody by surprise.”
A bout of inflation would be the killer app. It would destroy those bondholders that are not being compensated for any risks, including inflation, and who, as is the case in Europe and Japan, are paying for the privilege of lending to the government. If inflation ranges around the 2% that central banks are talking about, the 10-year Bunds with their zero coupon and their negative yield will lose nearly 20% in purchasing power when they’re redeemed. But inflation could go quite a bit higher….
And why do institutional investors stand in line to buy these bonds? Mass psychosis, as Grundlach said, is one reason. The other may be that they don’t have a choice (and central banks know that); and that ultimately they’re managing other people’s money, and so who cares?
Ironically, the Fed, which kicked off this madness in grand style during the Financial Crisis, is currently the only one of the big central banks flip-flopping about raising rates. The Bank of Japan, which invented this madness years before the Financial Crisis, the ECB, which belatedly got into this madness, and other central banks are flip-flopping about lowering rates and diving deeper into their QE shenanigans.
Here’s the gloomy scenario the “smart money” is betting on. Read… Fear, Loathing & Record Money-Making in Government Bonds