Corporate Bonds Content

The evidence about what happened to financial markets in March 2020 is still far too mixed and preliminary to conclude that new regulation is appropriate for bond mutual funds.

In the past decade, a number of regulators and academics have discussed concerns about the growth in the assets of bond mutual funds, as well as their increasing share of the bond market, especially the corporate bond market. 1 The concern is that bond fund investors, now playing a...

Why have bond mutual funds grown substantially in the past several years? There are two possible explanations, with very different implications.

Policymakers around the globe are studying the turmoil in March 2020 related to the COVID-19 pandemic to determine what happened and why. Similar work is being done by academics and other analysts. Bond mutual funds have been one area of focus, and policymakers will be considering the...

The first paper in ICI’s new research series, “The Impact of COVID-19 on Economies and Financial Markets,” focuses on the relationship between the pandemic, the economic shutdown it triggered, and the volatility that gripped the markets.

The novel coronavirus disease, or COVID-19, is taking a heavy toll on the world economy—in lives, in the costs of responding, and in lost production and consumption. Worldwide financial markets reflect this. How are retail investors reacting? Are they panicking, selling out? Or are...

In the past year, regulators have expressed concerns that regulated funds with a mandate to invest in investment grade corporate bonds might pose risks to financial stability. A case in point is the Bank for International Settlements’ (BIS) March 2019 Quarterly Review. The only way...

Financial stability concerns are being inflated by confusion over what the funds in question actually hold. In fact, these funds invest nearly half their assets in Treasury and agency securities, and less than one-third in corporate bonds. In other words, these funds hold more in...