Bond Veteran Laments Investors ‘Hoarding Cash Like Toilet Paper’
Bond Veteran Laments Investors ‘Hoarding Cash Like Toilet Paper’
(Bloomberg) -- Mark Holman runs a 17.8 billion pound ($20.9 billion) fixed-income firm but these days he really just wants cash.
The safest government debt is a nightmare to trade, and havens aren’t living up to their label, says the chief executive officer of TwentyFour Asset Management in London. The reason: the coronavirus-spurred market meltdown is sparking liquidations across the board.
“Investors are in a dash for cash and are hoarding it like shoppers are hoarding toilet paper,” according to Holman, who has been in the fixed-income business since 1989. A shortage of toilet paper has struck London as panicked consumers stock up amid fears of a lockdown.
In a note Friday, he described several holdings he’s attempted to exit with great difficulty recently: Some five-year Australian government bonds that took more than a week to sell, as well as “a modest position” in 30-year U.S. Treasuries that failed to generate interest from several major dealers.
“We would rather hold cash now than government bonds,” Holman wrote. “Government bonds are not doing their job in the future in the way that they have done in the past.”
Holman’s fund invests across the fixed-income spectrum, including corporate bonds and high-yield loans. He says poor trading conditions in government debt of late have been without precedent, which is a sentiment shared by his peers.
The inverse relationship that underpins some of the most popular strategies -- bonds rising when stocks fall -- is buckling in a dysfunctional market.
Just this Wednesday, U.S. stocks dropped 5% at the same time as a $17 billion exchange-traded fund tracking long-dated Treasuries, known as TLT, posted its second-worst session ever, only a day after its sharpest plunge in its history.
Another reason to dislike government bonds these days: Fiscal stimulus to help global economies through the virus will likely erode investor returns down the road.
“Remember we will also have enormous government bond supply in the years to come due to COVID-19 related spending, and we can’t be sure that the longer term effect of enormous fiscal stimulus will not be inflationary,” Holman wrote. “So government bonds will still be ‘risk free,’ but they will probably also be return free and not volatility free.”
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