Bonds

I went to a seminar on using Bonds in pension funds yesterday in London run by SPS as part of my training as required by the Pension Fund regulator. I can say with some certainty I was the most informally dressed individual in the room and I thought I had dressed up for the day.

At the start I knew 1 thing about Bonds (or fixed interest) which is that I knew nothing about Bonds.

At the end of the day I learned quite a lot about Bonds, the most significant of which were

• If you play with fixed interest, you better have a solid grasp of macro-economics
• Forget shares, this is where the big children play

I was expecting to feel out-gunned in the discussions over lunch and coffee, but that was not the case. Maybe I have learned something in my 3 years as a Sun Microsystems Pension fund trustee. What I did find surprising (actually no it is not) was the absolute and vindictive hatred that professional investors and trustees have for Independent Financial Advisors or bank tied advisors and the consensus was that an individual investor had a higher probably of making money by not doing what they suggest.