What caught my eye this week.

The serendipity was too perfect. I thought: I’d write about this on Monevator, but who would believe me?

My girlfriend and I were on a visit last week to a picturesque part of Wales. Out of nowhere the blue sky turned into a thunderstorm (because we were in a picturesque part of Wales) and we dashed for cover under a tarpaulin strung up in a car park, allegedly meant for the patrons of a nearby coffee van but surely put there as advanced compensation by the Welsh tourist board.

An older lady appeared out of the storm. All smiles and shaking her head. A few seconds later her even more elderly partner stepped in.

As I often do and she clearly always does, we got chatting.

Golden dears

It turned out that they were in their mid-to-late-80s and had been semi-retired for decades.

They looked fitter than some of my university friends.

“We always walk at least 13km a day!” the lady told me.

“It’s a big world,” her husband added. “You have to get out to see it.”

They’d met and married in Malaysia more than 50 years ago, when she was visiting as an English teacher. Nowadays they spent half the year living in the poshest part of this town, and spent October to March overseas.

“It’s always summer for us!” laughed the man.

He asked me what I did for a living, but then he didn’t particularly listen before he gave me his investing tips. I’ve heard worse.

She said they did part-time work as marriage counsellors for their church. It was important to stay active and engaged when you’re older, she confided.

“I have three pieces of advice!” interrupted the man. “Always forgive the other person. Don’t argue for more than one minute! And never do anything to make your partner unhappy.”

That last one seemed like a reach, I suggested. In my experience it was often out of your hands?

But he was already off telling my girlfriend how he’d got his baseball cap – and most of the rest of his walking clothes – from visits he’d made to his old employer. Waste not want not.

The rain stopped and we shook hands and said our goodbyes. But then it turned out they were actually walking the same way as us.

Faster than us…

Now he was running! The jogging baby steps of an 86-year old, sure, but definitely pulling away.

“He wants to watch the Lionesses,” the lady told me, as she sped into a power walk. Over her shoulder: “Nice to meet you!”

I wished I’d asked them for their sustainable withdrawal rate.

Have a great weekend.

[continue reading…]

With my clubbing days long behind me – unless incipient membership of Saga counts – I get my weekend kicks these days by studying the yields on long-term gilts (UK government bonds).

And for the past couple of weeks I’ve been entranced by a low-coupon gilt maturing in 2061.

This bond is known to wonks as ‘UKT 0.5 2061’ – or just ‘TG61’ – on account of it being:

• a UK government bond/gilt (‘UKT’)
• with a 0.5% coupon
• that matures in 2061

Now, those numbers may not seem exciting to you.

But for the past couple of years they’ve made TG61 the most popular bond since Sean Connery.

Bond jargon explainer: if you’re confused (or you’re about to be confused) by the terms in this article, please refer to our bond lingo lexicon. I won’t make this post even longer by explaining what duration is for the umpteenth time. Our guide makes everything clear.

The appeal of TG61 isn’t completely new to me. I even owned some for a short while last year.

But every time I look at it I’m flabbergasted anew.

One of these bonds is not like the others

What’s so weird about TG61?

Mostly that its yield-to-maturity is meaningfully lower than the similarly long duration gilts sitting either side of it on the curve.

Check out this industrial-strength bond data from Tradeweb:

Source: Tradeweb

Okay, that’s a lot of numbers. But the key and wacky thing to note is the yield column.

Compared to the bonds maturing either side of it, TG61 sports a yield that’s nearly 40 basis points (i.e. 0.4%) lower than its brethren.

So is there something special happening in the year 2061?

Or does TG61 come with a special maturity bonus, like those promotional saving accounts that nab a spot in the Best Buy tables with a last-minute kicker?

No – or at least not exactly.

The lowdown on low coupons

You see, there is something sort of special – though hardly unique – about TG61. Which is that in common with a few others issued in the near-zero interest rate era, it boasts a very low coupon rate.

This low coupon means that while the yield you can expect from TG61 – if you hold to maturity – is 5% (or 4.985% to be precise) only a small proportion of your return comes from income.

Mostly you’ll get a capital gain.

• You can see TG61 currently costs just over £25. But it will mature in 2061 with a face value of £100.
  
• The uplift from £25 to £100 – known as the ‘pull to par’ – delivers the bulk of its 5% yield.

That pull to par works out as a 300% capital gain. The 0.5% coupon is just the cherry on top.

In fact for private investors that little income cherry is more sour than sweet. That’s because as we’ve previously covered, gilt income is taxed but capital gains on gilts are not.

Which means that wealthy folk facing a lot of taxable interest on savings held outside of ISAs and SIPPs can buy TG61 instead, and look forward to a much higher realised return than the equivalent from cash.

Betting on interest rates with Treasury 2061

Well, I say look forward to. But even with my healthy diet and a fairly active lifestyle, let’s just say me seeing 2061 is a stretch goal.

Indeed holding TG61 to maturity might be ambitious for many of the richer folk who own it.

That matters, because TG61’s low coupon and distant maturity date make it a very long duration bond indeed.

Which in turn makes its price very volatile – because it’s very vulnerable to shifting expectations for interest rates and inflation between now and 2061.

• Just a 1% move in interest rates could see the price of TG61 move by c.30%!

On the other hand, if you can stomach the volatility then this is another reason why you might own TG61.

As I say, thanks to its low coupon and long duration, TG61 is especially responsive to changing interest rates.

Hence if you want to bet on lower rates, you get a lot of bang for your buck here.

An L-shaped graph

None of this is news. Savvy active investors have been hunting for opportunities in long-term gilts since the crash of 2022.

The only snag is that interest rates have stayed higher for longer than many expected.

So even if you grabbed your TG61 after the price falls from the post-Covid bond rout, you’ve had to be pretty nimble with the buy/sell button to bank a profit:

Source: Hargreaves Lansdown

Zoom in on that grim flatlining since 2023 and it’s a story of small rallies followed by lower lows.

Anyone buying and holding TG61 hasn’t got much to show for it yet.

So who would buy a bond like Treasury 61?

Perhaps you’re wondering who would own such a racy gilt, even with its tax advantages?

I mean, they haven’t outlawed bungee jumping and downhill skiing. There are plenty of other ways to get your thrills.

On which note: when I mentioned the long-term, low-coupon gilt trade to my co-blogger The Accumulator, he almost had a SWR-boosting cardiac event at the thought of buying a gilt that doesn’t mature for 36 years.

(He later calmed down with reflection and a hot cocoa).

However kicking things about in text chat, Monevator contributor Finumus pointed me to a recent [paywalled] Bloomberg article claiming the TG61 trade is super-popular in the City.

It’s hip in the Square

Describing the ‘most talked about bond’ as a ‘losing bet’, Bloomberg noted that:

As far back as 2022, a UK bond maturing in 2061 was one of the most popular plays, with City bankers buying them for their own personal accounts and brokers reporting a surge in trading volumes from wealthy clients.

Instead, they’re turning out to be a losing bet. The notes have plunged, wiping out more than half their value since 2022, in a selloff across longer-dated notes that’s been fueled by concerns over government spending. At a time when “buying the dip” is paying off for stock traders, the UK’s 2061s stand as a reminder that it can also be a treacherous game.

“People are still holding onto the position hoping that it will work,” said Megum Muhic, an interest rate strategist at RBC Capital Markets, calling it “the most talked about bond” in the City.

“It’s quite strange. It’s almost turned into a religion or something.”

I knew TG61 had fans. But I didn’t appreciate it was the new lap-dancing for London’s traders and bankers.

A cheap insurance policy

As it happens, I know one of these supposed cultists. It’s the same chap I’ve mentioned before as a recent-ish convert to the long-term gilt game.

My friend is also a Mogul-level Monevator member. So he kindly agreed to share his motivations, as follows:

Let’s start with some caveats.

For my sins, I’m one of those naughty ‘active investors’ that The Investor occasionally speaks of – the sort who owns individual stocks, some of which are obscure, illiquid, and occasionally interesting for the wrong reasons.

So I would say I’ve got a higher-than-average tolerance for volatility and esoterica in my portfolio. That’s important, because the very long-dated, low-coupon gilts I’ve been buying are definitely not for everyone.

As 2022 reminded investors rather forcefully, these instruments can be stomach-churningly volatile. You might wait decades for them to return to par – or even get close to it.

Passive purists, you may want to scroll down a bit (or at least look away politely) for the next few paragraphs.

I began building a position in these bonds in 2023. Now aged in my mid-30s, it felt like time to ease out of the 100% equity allocation I’ve held since my teenage years and start introducing some ballast into the portfolio as I get closer to potentially drawing it down.

Happily, gilts were having a moment – or rather, a markdown. After a generation of yields being miserly, suddenly we had discounts that would make TK Maxx blush.

Now long-dated gilts make up about 7% of my portfolio. I plan to keep adding opportunistically, for as long as yields look attractive to me.

Take that TG61 gilt maturing in 2061: based on Tradeweb data, it’s offering around 5% yield to maturity today.

Inflation could do anything between now and then, but a 5% government-backed return strikes me as a reasonable deal – especially since, all being well, I would be in my early 70s when it matures.

I’m willing to hold it for that long if prices and yields stay at these levels.

So I can’t claim this is a clever short-term trade, or that I’ve chosen to do it as part of an elaborate tax wheeze. It’s a basket of long-term holdings that nudges my portfolio closer to something suitable for eventual drawdown. So far, not so naughty.

But I did buy these gilts with one eye on the ‘option’ they provide.

Just as these long bonds got crushed when rates surged, the opposite could be true if rates fall. To me, it’s not outside the realms of possibility that – even within the next five to ten years – central banks could dust off the same playbook that ‘saved’ the global economy (and markets) during the last two major crises.

A return to quantitative easing might seem far-fetched today. Inflation still feels like an uninvited guest who won’t leave, and geopolitical tensions are bubbling away.

But in my experience, it’s always hard to see past the immediate mess – especially when markets have just taken a beating.

If that happens, these long gilts could soar – just when the rest of my (still equity-heavy) portfolio might be flagging.

In the meantime, I’m happy to have this option in my back pocket while holding onto my bonds, and if nothing else I’ll achieve the long-term yield on offer.

But I can’t help but feel that UK gilts will have their day again – at least at some point in the next 30-odd years. And I can’t shake the sense that the market will take these bonds off my hands in a time of crisis before then.

Who knows? With a bit of luck, I’ll be back here in 2061 to tell you how it all panned out.

Well there you have it, folks. They walk among us!

(Don’t tell The Accumulator…)

Won’t anybody think of the kinks?

My friend is unusual in that he’s buying a range of long-dated gilts. Also, since he’s mostly using tax shelters he’s not super-wedded to the tax advantages.

For most people though, I think you’d only buy TG61 rather than the higher-coupon gilts that flank it if your holding is subject to tax.

After all, you’re getting a much lower yield with TG61. That difference will really add up over the decades.

To illustrate this, Finumus bunged me a yield curve graph that shows what an outlier TG61 is:

As is his wont as a hard-charging captain of finance, Finumus hasn’t labelled the X-axis.

But what we’re looking at is how yields rise as you go out over the decades – before violently glitching down then spiking up again on the right-hand side of the graph.

That ‘woah’ moment? That’s the yield to redemption of Treasury 2061.

Remember my table at the start of this piece? We saw similar long-dated gilts offered yields of almost 5.4%.

The 5% on TG61 looks a very poor deal by comparison.

However you must calculate the after-tax yield – especially for higher or additional-rate tax payers – to truly grok the appeal of the Treasury 2061 gilt.

You can easily get this data from a service called YieldGimp:

Source: YieldGimp

Again, lots of numbers. But the columns to note are the ‘net redemption yield’ for a 40% taxpayer and the ‘equivalent grossed up yield’.

• The former shows us that a higher-rate taxpayer being taxed on their gilt income can expect a roughly 1% higher redemption yield from owning TG61 instead of TR60 or TR63.
• The latter calculates that as of today, TG61’s expected return is equivalent to a taxable cash account paying 7.49%.

In this light it’s pretty obvious why those cash-hoarding City boys love it.

Short(er) kings

Obvious… but I don’t think it’s quite a slam dunk though.

There are gilts maturing in 20 to 25 years’ time that offer similar redemption yields to TG61, without you having to go full Bryan Johnson to live long enough to see it mature.

Of course, the very high duration of TG61 – that also makes it such a great play on interest rate cuts – is providing some extra boost to its appeal.

Or maybe there’s some macho thing in the Square Mile about having the cojones to own such a volatile long-dated bond…

…though in that case we need to talk about Treasury 2073!

Or maybe not. The tax-adjusted yield on TR73 is much lower for private investors than on TG61 and others. It’s one for institutions where tax breaks aren’t a factor.

Treasury 2061: another market oddity

Talking of the institutions, it’s a bit of a mystery to me why the TG61 yield anomaly persists.

Shouldn’t the yield differentials be arbitraged away by the deep and liquid gilt market?

I guess the first thing to note is that the market isn’t quite as ‘deep and liquid’ as a bond tourist like me might imagine.

There’s only £26.5bn in TG61, for example, according to YieldGimp.

A big number for sure. But, you know, only 50,000 or so half-a-milly City nest eggs.

More seriously, doesn’t it seem odd that a hedge fund can’t step in and arb the differentials away?

Finumus muttered something about “weird basis risks” when I joked with him that we should set up a vehicle to do it ourselves.

What he means, I think, is that such a fund would use futures contracts and lots of leverage to actually express your view that the yield to maturity on TG61 ought to converge to be roughly the same as its compadres. And these structures would be imperfect enough – especially given the very long timeframes – to make the trade unviable.

Still, it’s interesting to think about, since in my opinion the lower yield on TG61 is really odd.

I’m no expert, but it’s not even obvious to me that the secondary very high duration as a means to get more interest rate risk oomph argument adds up.

Usually in investing you’d expect a higher expected return to compensate you for extra risk.

So it’s all about the income tax break I’d say.

A long and winding road

I do like my friend’s insurance policy angle for owning long-dated gilts though. And I suppose that is much the same as chasing Treasury 2061’s high duration.

Personally, I’ve already tried to tuck some very long gilts away for the same potential crash-protection properties that my pal alludes to.

But, as is my wont, I sold them for a small gain soon after.

Perhaps – unlike my friend, who despite being an investing fanatic can go a year between making trades – I’m just not cut out to own a gilt that matures around the same time I’ll be looking forward to a telegram from King George!

What’s better than FIRE-ing once? FIRE-ing twice, baby!1

This time last year I was effectively working full-time again, after opt-in house renovation costs evaporated The Accumulators’ coffers like a reservoir in a heatwave.

The best remedy I could think of was to put my FIRE dream on hold, replenish our reserves, and then resign my post once again.

And happily, that’s just what happened.

I re-entered the FIRE fold in February. My happiness levels ticked up as follows:

Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration.

But I am happier. Mrs Accumulator, too, as I understand it. (Hopefully you’ll get an independent update directly from The Organ-Grinder soon.)

Work-strife balance

My FIRE hiatus was purely about the money. It wasn’t about buyer’s remorse or trying to fill a void.

There was no post-career void to fill. I don’t miss my old life. I don’t need it, I don’t want it.

That isn’t to say ‘work’ doesn’t have a role to play in my version of a fulfilling life. I’m completely happy to accept Visa, Mastercard, or cash for doing a few things I’m not terrible at.

Sometimes I even enjoy these tasks, provided they don’t:

• Consume my every waking hour
• Involve a deluge of ‘comms’
• Require me to invent a nonsense reason about why I want this role. (It’s for the money, obviously)
• Attend ‘ra-ra’ team days that constantly invoke a set of ‘values’ that should, let’s face it, be a given

On the other hand, challenging work – that’s easy on the BS, and fits into a sane fraction of the week – is absolutely fine by me.

There’s not much to beat the feeling of goofing-off with Mrs Accumulator after a day of slaving over a hot laptop to produce an Earth-shattering Monevator post!

I’ve got to have light and shade in my life. I can’t operate without a base level of eustress.

Think of me as a dog who loves his walkies or chasing a ball in the park. It’s that basic.

The reality gap

A lot of FIRE blogs are (or were) filled with fabulous post-work feats.

You know the kind of thing:

• Here we are on our world tour, drinking mezcal margaritas served by a shaman
• Here we are again! Now we’re hand-rearing an abandoned baby dolphin that we rescued from a secret US military program

It makes sense. We all need inspiration – including the readers of FIRE blogs. Sometimes only the sight of an enormous, juicy, prize-winning carrot can spur you on when you’re doing the hard yards.

A middle-aged couple eating jammy scones in the garden on a Wednesday afternoon probably won’t cut it. It can’t be many people’s idea of living the dream.

But it is mine.

Many happy non-financial returns

The problem when you arrive at the destination is your new life can’t be all shamans, dolphins, and carrots.

For the joy to stick, life cannot be about making every day extraordinary.

It’s got to be about finding the extraordinary in the everyday.

So when I lean back and think about the past year’s ordinary days that were just lovely, I remember…

…the day we had a power cut. I had no excuse but to take off into the countryside on my bike. Eventually I found myself on a bench, with a beautiful valley for company, eating a pasty. What a day.

…being able to say “yes” when my brother suggested a road trip to see my Dad in Scotland. It was the longest time we’ve spent together since we were kids. It was a great trip, notable for Pro Max tomfoolery, catching up with the oldsters, climbing hills, and ribbing each other without mercy.

…meeting old friends for a Full English – but only after I’d earned it. That meant a wonderful morning pedalling the arteries of Britain’s industrial past. Threading together reclaimed railway lines and canals. Up and over an imperious aqueduct, mighty like a power-pose in stone. Passing by paddleboarding youngsters following their leader. Sooty tunnels. All a gorgeous backdrop for a human pinball game of families, couples, dog-walkers, and joggers.

…being able to say “yes” whenever Mrs Accumulator says, “Let’s go for a walk.” (She always warns me she can’t think what we’re going to talk about. And then we yak our heads off the whole way around.)

…a brilliant autumn day yomping with The Investor. More top-tier yakkery about anything and everything. All the better for being grounded by the kind of mickey-taking and BS-calling you only get from someone who knows you very well.

Perhaps the link between my memories is connection. Whether with myself, the world, people I love, or total randoms that I’ll never see again but who still made the effort to make a fleeting moment go well.

The other link is time.

It’s not that these things couldn’t happen when I was working or, more accurately, ‘careering’.

But they did happen much less frequently, and with persistent interruptions (“Sorry, I just gotta take this call”) or under an anvil cloud of looming stress.

Spend now, maybe pay later

We lost another close family member this past year. They were 85 and decided to discontinue the drugs that were holding down their cancer.

For Mrs Accumulator and I that’s an entire branch of the family swept away in two years.

One moment they were roving around Europe, loving their retirement, loving each other… Next, they’re gone.

I can’t help but pay attention to what that’s telling me.

I’m a planner at heart. It makes sense to me to think about what happens if we make it to our nineties and beyond.

However, I’m actively muzzling that impulse now in favour of spending more to have a better time while we can.

I’m not talking about asset-allocating 30% of our portfolio to a supercar.

But l think it’s okay to loosen up on stuff that makes a real difference to our quality of life here and now.

Granted, it puts upward pressure on our long-term failure rate. I’ll manage that as we go.

But we’re eating out more than we have for years. Binning off the socks that are more hole than sock. Buying the occasional piece of furniture that makes us smile every time we see it.

This is harder for Mrs Accumulator. She’s a born worrier and austerity merchant.

I don’t have those genes. I had to learn how to become a hardcore saver.

The purpose of that phase was to become financially independent. Now we’re here, what’s the point of not enjoying it?

Purposefully passive

I’m paying relatively little attention to our portfolio.

Drafting in some volatility dampeners like gold and broad commodities has improved my confidence in our strategic balance. (I love the way those assets knocked the bottoms off some of history’s greatest drawdowns.)

Inflation is covered now I’ve got to grips with index-linked gilts.

If anything goes hideously wrong I’m sure the news will find me pretty quick.

My media feed is full of threats, of course. AI, populism, deglobalisation, the Climate Crisis, Putin, Britain sinking beneath a tide of debt, despair, and decline… You name it.

But it’s all outside my circle of control.

I care about it. I pay attention. I could talk to you for hours about it – but I’m not going to let it menace my every day.

The next 12 months

I’m probably going to need another long-term project or two to keep me feeling like I’m part of the real world.

At the moment, I’m regaining the fitness I lost when Covid and then FIRE stopped me cycling to work five days a week. I’ve struggled to find a non-negotiable exercise slot ever since.

That’s the problem with being your own boss. I’m too soft on my employees!

Beyond that, I would like to do something with a community focus. It needs to be IRL. Ideally it will require me to collaborate with lots of new people and not have much to do with a laptop.

I’ll report back on progress – if any – next year.

Take it steady,

The Accumulator

P.S. Our FIRE budget for 2024-25 was £28,400 for two. Actual spend minus one-off renovation costs: £28,750. Bad TA!

1. FIRE is shorthand for Financial Independence Retire Early. In other words quitting work and living off your investments – or at least having the option to. [↩]