Bonds & Fixed Income

The bond market is roughly 1.5 to 2 times the size of the global stock market, but most retail investors couldn't tell you what a 10-year Treasury yields, what duration measures, or why their "safe" bond fund lost 13% in 2022. This book closes that gap. Across 15 chapters and ~310 articles, it walks the entire fixed-income landscape — from what a bond actually is and how its cash flows work, through the math of yield and duration, the major sectors (Treasuries, corporates, munis, TIPS, EM sovereigns), the strategies professionals use, and the regimes where bonds save your portfolio versus the regimes when they sink with everything else.

Who this book is for

You've heard "you should own some bonds" and added BND to your portfolio without really knowing what's inside. Or you've avoided bonds entirely because "interest rates are going up." Or you're approaching retirement and realising the equity-only portfolio that got you here is not the one that gets you through the next thirty years. Whatever your starting point, this book gives you a working bond practitioner's toolkit — without the textbook math overload.

What you walk away with

• A complete mental model of a bond — issuer, coupon, face value, maturity, and the cash-flow timeline that defines every yield calculation.
• The bond math that matters: YTM, YTC, YTW, current yield, breakeven inflation, tax-equivalent yield — and how to read a Bloomberg quote.
• The price-yield relationship demystified: why prices fall when rates rise, the pull-to-par, the 2022 bond bear, and what really drove the 2023 SVB collapse.
• A genuinely intuitive treatment of duration and convexity — the two numbers that summarise a bond's behaviour without forcing you to swim in calculus.
• A tour of the sovereign curve worldwide: Treasuries, gilts, bunds, OATs, BTPs, JGBs, and the EM hard-currency space — with their tax treatment and roles.
• The corporate bond market end-to-end — IG vs HY, senior vs subordinated, covenants, callable structures, fallen angels, distressed debt.
• The muni bond playbook — when tax-equivalent yield justifies them, when it doesn't, and the AMT trap.
• TIPS, I-Bonds, and inflation-linked gilts — what they really protect against, and where breakeven inflation comes from.
• A working understanding of the yield curve — its shapes, theories, and the most reliable recession signal in modern financial history.
• The honest case for bond funds and ETFs vs individual bonds — including BulletShares-style defined-maturity ETFs and the March 2020 NAV-dislocation episode.
• The credit rating system — its scales, conflicts of interest, and the spectacular 2008 MBS rating failure.
• A complete strategy chapter — laddering, barbell, bullet, immunisation, cash-flow matching, roll-down — with the framework to pick the right one.
• The regime-by-regime look at bonds in a portfolio — when they ballast, when they fail (1970s, 2022), and the 2022 stock-bond correlation break.
• A historical tour of bond market crises — 1994, 1998, 2008, 2013, 2015, 2020, 2022 (TIPS rout AND UK gilt LDI crisis), 2023 (SVB) — and the warning signs that preceded each.
• The catalogue of common bond mistakes — chasing yield, ignoring duration, callable yield traps, EM overweight, junk-as-fixed-income — and the rules that prevent them.

How to read this book

Chapters 1–4 are foundational and best read in order: what a bond is, the yield arithmetic, the price-yield relationship, and duration/convexity. Chapters 5–8 are the major sectors — Treasuries, corporates, munis, TIPS — and can be read independently as you need them. Chapter 9 (the yield curve) ties the whole framework together and is essential before Chapter 12 (strategies). Chapter 10 (funds and ETFs) is what most readers will actually act on. Chapter 11 (credit ratings) supports both 6 and 8. Chapters 13 (portfolio role) and 14 (crises) are the synthesis. Chapter 15 (mistakes) is the catalogue you re-read every year. Chapter 16 is the consolidated glossary.

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