Fixed Income

Bonds and fixed-income securities are the other half of most portfolios, yet they get a fraction of the attention stocks do. These articles explain how bonds are priced, why yields move inversely to prices, and how credit risk, duration, and convexity affect your returns. Understanding fixed income helps you build more resilient portfolios.

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Bond Market Fundamentals

Bonds are loans you make to governments or corporations in exchange for regular interest payments and the return of your principal. These articles cover the basics — how bonds are issued, priced, and traded, what coupon rates and maturities mean, and why bonds behave differently from stocks in your portfolio.

beginner20 articles

Yield Duration and Convexity

Yield, duration, and convexity are the three metrics that define how a bond responds to changes in interest rates. These articles explain what each measure tells you, how they interact, and why understanding them is essential for managing interest rate risk in any fixed-income portfolio.

beginner20 articles

Government and Sovereign Debt

Government bonds — Treasuries, gilts, bunds — are the bedrock of global financial markets. These articles explain how sovereign debt works, why government bond yields serve as benchmarks for all other borrowing costs, and how factors like fiscal policy, inflation expectations, and central bank actions drive their prices.

beginner18 articles

Corporate and High-Yield Strategies

Corporate bonds offer higher yields than government debt, but they come with credit risk — the chance the issuer can't pay you back. These articles cover investment-grade and high-yield bonds, credit analysis techniques, and strategies for balancing the extra income against the risk of default.

intermediate13 articles

Municipal and Tax-Advantaged Bonds

Municipal bonds offer tax-exempt income that can be especially valuable for investors in higher tax brackets. These articles explain how munis work, the difference between general obligation and revenue bonds, how to evaluate credit quality, and when the tax advantages make munis a better choice than taxable alternatives.

intermediate20 articles

Credit Markets and Analysis

Credit markets are where risk gets priced — and understanding credit analysis helps you evaluate any debt instrument, from corporate bonds to structured products. These articles cover credit ratings, spread analysis, default probabilities, and the tools analysts use to assess whether a borrower can meet its obligations.

intermediate13 articles

Structured Products and Securitization

Securitization bundles individual loans — mortgages, auto loans, credit card debt — into tradeable securities. These articles explain how structured products like MBS, ABS, and CDOs work, how tranching allocates risk, and what the 2008 financial crisis taught us about the dangers of complexity in credit markets.

advanced20 articles

Fixed Income Portfolio Management

Managing a bond portfolio requires balancing yield, duration, credit quality, and liquidity across changing interest rate environments. These articles cover portfolio construction strategies like laddering, barbells, and bullets, along with techniques for immunization and performance attribution in fixed-income portfolios.

advanced20 articles

Popular Articles

Green and Sustainability-Linked Bond Issuance

Green bonds and sustainability-linked bonds are not the same instrument. Credit investors need to know how use-of-proceeds, KPI design, and weak step-up penalties affect spread and downside.

intermediate

Cash Management Bills and Short-Term Funding

The U.S. Treasury's operating cash balance—held in the Treasury General Account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York—swings wildly, ranging from $2...

Glossary: Treasury and Sovereign Debt Terms

The U.S. Treasury market is the largest and most liquid securities market on Earth — $27.5 trillion in marketable debt outstanding as of Q4 2025 (U.S....

State and Federal Government Debt Differences

The federal government owes $28.2 trillion to public investors. State and local governments, combined, owe roughly $3.5–$4.0 trillion. That's approxim...

Treasury Securities in Portfolio Construction

The U.S. Treasury market is the deepest, most liquid fixed-income market on the planet — $27.8 trillion in marketable debt outstanding and roughly $85...

Debt Ceiling Debates and Market Reactions

The US federal debt stood at $36.2 trillion as of January 2025 — roughly $28.2 trillion held by the public and $7.2 trillion in intragovernmental hold...

Understanding the Fed Funds Rate Transmission

The Federal Reserve cut the fed funds rate by 100 basis points between September and December 2024 — three consecutive cuts designed to ease financial...

Repo Markets and Treasury Collateral

The US repo market averages $4.4 trillion in daily outstanding volume (SIFMA, 2024), making it the single most important short-term funding market in...

How Treasury Futures Hedge Rate Risk

Interest rate futures and options totaled $61 trillion in notional outstanding globally at end-2024 (BIS OTC Derivatives Statistics). Treasury futures...

Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS)

Approximately $2.0 trillion in Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities sit in investor portfolios today, representing roughly 7–8% of all marketable U...

Structure of US Treasury Bills, Notes, and Bonds

The U.S. Treasury market is the deepest, most liquid bond market on Earth — and it isn't close. As of Q4 2025, $28.9 trillion in marketable Treasury d...

Disclosure Requirements and EMMA Filings

Municipal disclosure is voluntary and uneven. Learn to navigate EMMA, interpret the 14 reportable events, assess disclosure quality, and identify red flags that signal credit deterioration before rating agencies act.

intermediate