[apo]

For those wondering why anyone would buy such a thing, consider:

- Many financial institutions are required to hold a certain percent of portfolio in safe assets. German bunds are among the safest in the world.

- A holder of a bond earns a capital gain (bond goes up in price) when interest rates fall. In that sense, zero is no limit at all because there can always be a buyer willing to accept an even lower (more negative) yield.

- Bond investors are well-aware of the two points above. When they sense that interest rates and/or inflation are headed lower, they know they can profit by buying, regardless of yield.

- Anticipated rate of inflation matters a lot because investors seeking return through yield focus on real interest rates (nominal rate - inflation). Inflation can be negative as well (deflation). If inflation is lower (more negative) than the bond's nominal return, that's a real positive yield. And that positive yield is locked in for the term of the bond, which in the case of the story is 30 years.

- The European Central Bank has repeatedly signaled its belief that zero is no barrier and that negative yields will be tolerated indefinitely. The ECB stands ready for quantitative easing (QE), in which the central bank buys bonds with money it creates from thin air. Investors know this and this compounds the incentive to pile on and buy bonds to enjoy the capital gains (and real returns if the investor believes that deflation is inevitable).

It's likely that all these factors combine to create the current environment. How long all of this can continue is anybody's guess because the situation is without precedent.

It's as if the financial crisis of 2008 was never resolved - just papered over through massive central bank purchases of treasuries and stocks (Japan's central bank owns a major fraction of the value of the Japanese stock market at this point).

[solatic]

> - Many financial institutions are required to hold a certain percent of portfolio in safe assets.

In practice this is turning into unnatural demand guaranteed by the law, which goes against free markets and will eventually implode upon itself. If you force the market to buy a certain product regardless of quality, then the underlying quality of that product will erode (as there is no longer an incentive to provide quality and quality implies cost), and the market will evaporate as stakeholders disappear and move to other markets which do assure real quality. That there was natural demand for such products in the past, and indeed that natural demand may coincide with unnatural demand in the present, is not a guarantor for demand levels staying natural in the future.

In context, this creates underlying pressure for investors to divest from Euro holdings. It's likely that investors are currently sticking with the Euro because they have few other avenues for escape, but this is not likely to hold - whether due to Brexit/Euroskepticism or some other external crisis which changes the playing field.

[landivar2]

When you have a central bank that can control rates, no alternative money, and the bank can set rates negative, the equilibrium is for the government to own almost all assets. I'm not kidding. You will end up with communism, only via government regulation of rates, unless something breaks this up.

[whatok]

Good post that covers nearly everything. The only thing I would add to this is that the ECB's deposit rate of -0.40% is the only thing that has enabled all of this.

[wcoenen]

This would explain negative bond rates down to -0.40%. Because if you need to park a very large amount of euros safely, banks will start to apply that rate to your deposits so it's better to get any rate that is less negative.

But curiously 10y german bund yields have recently hit -0.70%, and a couple other EU countries (France, Netherlands, Belgium) have also dipped below -0.40%.

So it must be more than the negative deposit rate. It's also the QE program which buys bonds (though it's on hold since the start of the year), and the expectation of lower deposit rates, and the expectation of more QE.

[AdrianB1]

Actually the ability of the ECB to print money out of nothing is the main enabler.

[logicallee]

>- Many financial institutions are required to hold a certain percent of portfolio in safe assets. German bunds are among the safest in the world.

Can you explain how this can possibly beat cash? If I say to you "I'll let you pay me ten cents to hold onto your $100 bill for a while, and give you a paper showing the obligation to repay your $100" (the meaning of a negative yield bond), how can the offer to let you pay ten cents to let me hold your $100 possibly be less risky than just holding the $100?

Why would a bond with a negative yield ever be a safer asset than just holding the cash?

[toast0]

Holding cash usually means putting it in a bank account. The banks are going to put a significant portion in their country's central bank; the European central bank and member central banks are currently charging banks to store money; at large balances, those banks will charge customers.

Now, you could put cash into a USD account at a US bank, where interest is still currently positive, but if you were storing Euros, you now have currency risk and jurisdiction risk. Negative rate German bonds have less risk than that.

[nabla9]

Cash is universally considered the most liquid asset because it can most quickly and easily be converted into other assets.

If the amount of physical cash is huge however, say 1 billion euros, it can be less liquid than German government bonds. There is cost of moving, counting, securing it and significant delay for buying and selling. If you try to buy something for 1 billion EUR in cash, it might cost 100k EUR to do so and few days until you can buy anything.

But you are correct, there is probably a limit after wich banks start to convert some part of their assets to cash.

[auntienomen]

The world is different when you're dealing with really large amounts of cash. You can't just store it yourself; your mattress isn't big enough. And if you ask a bank to store it for you, the bank will charge you for the service. (Banks that work in this line of business are known as 'custodian banks'.) Consequently, the effective interest rate on cash for large amounts of cash can be negative.

[whatok]

You can argue safety (bonds you have sovereign default risk vs cash will have bank credit risk) but your math is not incorporating how a transaction in this case would actually take place. It's not as simple as just holding onto $100. You have a deposit rate of -0.40% at the ECB. So instead of -0.40%, you settle for -0.14% which is what these newly issued Bunds are yielding.

[DennisP]

Not a safer asset, but possibly a more profitable one, since if interest rates go down even further, you can sell your bond for a capital gain. To see how the numbers look out, go to https://portfoliocharts.com/2019/05/27/high-profits-at-low-r...

Of course if interest rates go up, you have to keep the bond until it matures (earning less interest than you would with a new bond), or sell it for a capital loss. But this is always a risk with long-term bonds, and institutions still hold them.

[blawson]

Maybe at certain sums much larger than individual depositors concern themselves with, you can't just "hold the cash".

Like banks might say there is no way we want your $10 billion in cash to look after. Either invest it yourself or pay us to invest it for you.

[noah_greeen]

As some people already mentioned, the problem is the amount of cash you would have to keep safe somewhere. As far as I know, there are companies that use tunnels in mountains to act as huge cash depots. But such a storage also comes at a price. Also to prevent this kind of business, the European Central Bank already considered dismissing the 500 Euro bill. With that the physical amount to store would be even bigger. (The german economics professor Hans-Werner Sinn mentioned this once in a talk)

[kovek]

A lot of commentators are discussing the drawdowns of storing cash bills. However, who buys bonds by paying with physical cash bills? Most of us have a number in our bank account that reflects some sort of wealth? (Ownership of a security elsewhere or an I Owe You?) People with a salary directly deposited and big companies do not need a bank to store their physical cash bills.

I’m still trying to understand how this all happened.

[shpongled]

Also, you can sell or buy bonds at any time - you're not locked in for 30 years. I think this is a crucial point many don't understand

[simonebrunozzi]

Great comment, however:

> the central bank buys bonds with money it creates from thin air

QE generates inflation in the long run, which would by definition make these bonds less valuable over time.

[dvfjsdhgfv]

> - Anticipated rate of inflation matters a lot because investors seeking return through yield focus on real interest rates (nominal rate - inflation). Inflation can be negative as well (deflation). If inflation is lower (more negative) than the bond's nominal return, that's a real positive yield. And that positive yield is locked in for the term of the bond, which in the case of the story is 30 years.

But for this and the other reasons you mention, wouldn't cash be in any case better than the bonds?