Earlier quoted context omitted.
"97% of these MBS were 10+ year duration, with a weighted average yield of 1.56%." I'd like to learn more about the dramatic drop in MBS - elsewhere, downthread, it is asserted that they have dropped 30-50% ? I understand the inverse relationship between bond price and yield ... ... but I am surprised that an asset yielding ~1.5% drops 30% in value when treasuries of similar duration rise to 3-4%. Are there other fac…
I will first try to explain with simplified numbers and then do the equivalent calculation somewhere else. Let's assume you buy a $100 bond with 0% rate for 10 years. For simplicity, let's assume it's a riskless bond. Now, let's suppose those same bonds now pay 5% a month later. Well, the smart thing to do would be to sell your 1-month old bond and buy the new one. Of course, everyone is doing the same thing so the p…
Emphasis on the exponential decay relationship between market price and time-to-maturity. If you change that 10 to a 30, the bond is worth $23, and if you change it to a 50, it's $8.72. For a bond that pays $100 at maturation.
I think laypeople intuitively guess that long-dated bonds are safer, because that is sort of how it feels when you are borrowing money to buy a house. But in terms of the market value of the bond, you add exponentially more interest rate sensitivity as the time-to-maturity increases.