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Wary investors send US bond yields below 1%
New York, Sept 07: Attractive safe havens are getting harder to find in the US financial markets, and not even an enlivened economy is likely to offer relief. Hurt by a rout in the treasury market, total returns on many categories of bonds have sunk to 1% for the year or less in recent weeks, nearly wiping out first-half gains.
New York, Sept 07: Attractive safe havens are getting harder to find in the US financial markets, and not even an enlivened economy is likely to offer relief. Hurt by a rout in the treasury market, total returns on many categories of bonds have sunk to 1% for the year or less in recent weeks, nearly wiping out first-half gains.
The damage came as money market fund yields hit record lows of one-half of 1%, marking the first year that bonds and money market funds both fared so poorly.
The subpar performance of defensive assets could drag on for a while, experts say, hurting millions of investors who fled stocks in recent years to stuff their portfolios with cash and bonds. “Unfortunately, a lot of investors have overreacted to different events in the market in the past three years and have often been too late getting out of sinking asset classes and too late getting into solid-performing classes,” said Bradley Sweeney, a Morningstar analyst. “There’s been a lot of over-steering.”
Investors have been cashing out of bond funds in recent weeks, yet not soon enough to avoid the pain. Bond funds pulled in $67.7bn in the first six months of the year and had their first outflow of the year only in July, when they lost $10.8bn, according to the Investment Company Institute.
For the past three years, low inflation, an anaemic economy and falling interest rates sent bond prices surging. Bond mutual funds attracted a flood of cash, including a record $140bn in ’02. Bureau Report
The subpar performance of defensive assets could drag on for a while, experts say, hurting millions of investors who fled stocks in recent years to stuff their portfolios with cash and bonds. “Unfortunately, a lot of investors have overreacted to different events in the market in the past three years and have often been too late getting out of sinking asset classes and too late getting into solid-performing classes,” said Bradley Sweeney, a Morningstar analyst. “There’s been a lot of over-steering.”
Investors have been cashing out of bond funds in recent weeks, yet not soon enough to avoid the pain. Bond funds pulled in $67.7bn in the first six months of the year and had their first outflow of the year only in July, when they lost $10.8bn, according to the Investment Company Institute.
For the past three years, low inflation, an anaemic economy and falling interest rates sent bond prices surging. Bond mutual funds attracted a flood of cash, including a record $140bn in ’02. Bureau Report