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Weekend reading: The coming massacre in bonds (or bond punditry)

Good reads from around the Web.

A post of the week. Here’s Josh Brown at The Reformed Broker [1] warning about an inevitable crash in the bond market:

I’m going to say this here and now for posterity and I hope you bookmark it:

There’s going to be such a brutal bond investor slaughter at some point over the next decade that the streets of Boston’s mutual fund district will run red with blood, the skies will be shot through with the lightning and thunder of unexpected capital losses and those who manage to survive will envy the dead.

Now a slaughter in bonds will not look like an equity market crash, the volatility characteristics are different and bonds eventually mature. But in some ways it will feel much worse than a stock crash because the money parked in bonds is thought of as low or no-risk.

The fixed income guys know what’s going to happen, too. Why do you think the Bond Kings at PIMCO and DoubleLine are pushing into equity funds? They’re getting three-year track records under their belts for when the big switch comes.

One reason Josh Brown is an excellent writer and pundit is because he doesn’t prevaricate. It may not be good advice – I have no idea about his track record, either way – but it grabs you right in your special interests.

In contrast, while I happen to think Brown is likely right about bonds, I’d feel duty bound to caveat it with warnings about deflation, Japan, market timing, and 20-year bear markets.

In fact, I already did [2]. Some of my readers may have ended up wiser for it, but I suspect a few of them ended up asleep.

Brown’s is the strategy of a Wall Street professional. If he’s right, he can point to his prediction for years to come. If he’s wrong, nobody will ever remember – maybe not even Josh Brown, thanks to hindsight bias [3].

Perhaps even Google will forget his page eventually.

It’s a great post – and I think likely a good call – but it’s not necessarily correct.

Remember that. Even if posterity does prove him right.

From the blogs

Making good use of the things that we find…

Passive investing

Active investing

Other articles

Product of the week: A review in The Guardian [17] singles out the Virgin’s Little Rock Access Account [18] as among the best children’s savings accounts. It pays 3%.

Mainstream media money

Highlights from the wall of noise…

Passive investing

Active investing

Other stuff worth reading

Book (reader) of the week: Amazon’s gorgeous new Kindle Fire HD [33] readers are now shipping. I still prefer my old-fashioned Kindle, but whatever model you prefer, these e-readers are clearly the future of books.

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