Articles Tagged with risk disclosure

In the recent years, we witnessed a sharp decline in Puerto Rican municipal bond prices and related assets, resulting in an upsurge in FINRA claims, arbitrations and awards. This has revealed new insights into the bond market and we anticipate a wave of FINRA Arbitration cases linked to bonds and fixed income asset classes.

After the recession in 2008, there has been a massive movement away from equities towards the seemingly less-risky and volatile asset class of bonds, creating a spike in demand for U.S. treasuries, corporate and municipal bonds. More than $1 trillion has flowed into the U.S. bond market since 2008.

Bonds are sensitive to interest rates and it’s pricing inversely proportional to interest rates. Fed has explicitly stated their intent to hike interest rates going forward, therefore, a fall in bond prices can be reasonably anticipated. Rising interest rates will result in losses for bond investors, most immediate effect being paper losses, and the inability to sell those bonds without incurring actual losses for a long time. Majority of the impact will be felt by longer term bond investors with 10 years or more to maturity and by non-treasury bond holders that tend to fall faster as rates rise.

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