The bond bull market is finally over

Investors have been talking about the end of the bond bull market for years. But it hasn't materialised - until now.

879_MW_P06_Markets_Top

The People's Bank of China may stop buying so many US government bonds
(Image credit: Copyright (c) 2016 Shutterstock. No use without permission.)

Investors have been talking about the end of the bond bull market "for years now", says Fidelity's Tom Stevenson in The Daily Telegraph. But "they have been wrong to do so". In 1981, US inflation stood at 14%, and the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to 20% to squeeze it out. The yield on the ten-year US Treasury, the benchmark for the global debt system, hit nearly 16%. As the bond prices subsequently rocketed (prices move inversely to interest rates), the yield slumped to around 2% in the early part of this decade.

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up
Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.