Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by zie 16 days ago
Indeed. Category #4 "high yield corporate bonds" are also known as "Junk bonds" because they kind of suck at the stable cashflow part, since they tend to go to $0 sometimes, much like stocks.

Technically when bonds "go to $0", you actually get priority over any corporate assets vs stock ownership, but if the bond went to $0, there is likely not a lot of assets left either. So you can't expect to get saved completely from whatever asset sale happens.

1 comments

Credit events (late payments, bankruptcy, etc.) for junk bonds are much less rare than people think. If there is bankruptcy, usually it is Chapter 11 which allows for re-org.

    > Technically when bonds "go to $0"
Extremely unlikely, unless there is massive accounting fraud. Recovery rates are on average about 45-55% (since 1987 according to research by S&P).
> Recovery rates are on average about 45-55% (since 1987 according to research by S&P).

Exactly.