The bond market makes headlines

August 2026

The bond market was in the news in August – and it’s never entirely comforting when a subject so supposedly boring makes the headlines.

First off was the surprising US Treasury intervention on behalf of the Japanese yen. Seen as an effort to avoid Japan selling any of their mountain of US debt, this was followed not long afterwards by the Treasury supporting the long end of the bond market in the face of a sell off. As always, Katie Martin provides an excellent summary of the situation in the FT here.

Elsewhere, there were signs of trouble at Mark Walter’s Guggenheim Partners (such as here). The company was a pioneer amongst private capital firms taking control of life insurance companies, a strategy that has spread far and wide across the US and beyond.

So much for August being a quiet month – despite this, we trust you had a good summer.

You can find our usual factsheet here – or look here for a Thinking Aloud paper on some of the obvious issues with passive investing.