Not to be alarmist, but something truly bizarre happened in the financial markets this week: For a brief period, investors were briefly being paid to buy debt issued by Germany, the famously prudent government borrower. What witchcraft is this?
This is some of the safest debt on the planet — so attractive to global investors that demand had pushed benchmark 10-year yields into negative territory since 2019. That meant investors effectively had to pay to hold German government bonds.
The adage went: Never ever sell the Bund. But it seems some fund managers did exactly that this week, cranking up yields. Crucially, the apex of those yields was above zero. Truly, these are the end times.