[khyryk]

Loading up on bonds when rates are rock bottom instead of bills is asking for trouble. Sure, when yields are at averages or historic highs, back the truck up; otherwise, there's not much difference between yielding 0% and 1%, but a lot of difference in liquidity.

As an aside, I remember in recent times various institutions, either by law or voluntarily, loading up on long term bonds at 0% +/- 0.5% bonds. I'm sure that's going to be a fun situation should they face even a slight liquidity crisis of, say, more retirees pulling money out than there are young people depositing into pensions and whatnot.

[jurassic]

Can you explain the difference between bills and bonds and why the difference was significant in this case? For myself and probably a lot of engineers reading this comment, it seems like inside baseball.

[khyryk]

Bills are shorter duration, bonds are longer duration. You can look up the terms to get exact time ranges. When the yields for both are very low, there's next to no upside to holding onto the low yield for longer. The downside is that if one is in critical need of cash immediately, nobody wants the old low-yield (compared to current yields) bonds and will only buy them at a discount. For bills, due to the shorter duration, extra liquidity is built-in.