Sleep easy in the bond market
Investors are flocking to the safety of bonds as subprime lending fallout continues to drag Wall Street on a wild ride. The returns are nothing special, but some folks just want to know their nest egg is protected. Stacey Vanek-Smith reports.
A $100 U.S. EE Savings Bond embossed with Thomas Jefferson
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Scott Jagow: When the stock markets struggle like this, bonds look like a safe, warm blanket to investors. Sure enough this morning, U.S. Treasury bond futures jumped to a 20-month high. Stacey Vanek-Smith has more on the bond market.
Stacey Vanek-Smith: Bonds maybe a very safe place to stow money, but they're not very lucrative. The return on the 10-year T-note is at about 4.5 percent right now. That's a five-month low.
Jordan Goodman: People are more concerned about the return of their money than the return on their money.
Personal finance expert Jordan Goodman says because fewer investors are willing to take risks, those that do can make a lot of money.
Goodman: The spread between risky and non-risky is going to get even wider as people continue to abandon things that have more risk. And so you're going to continue to see Treasury bill rates falling and the rates on risky assets rising.
Goodman says those rising rates are bringing out the bargain hunters. Some investors are buying up things like junk bonds and mortgage backed securities at fire sale rates.
I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith for Marketplace.
