- [Jordan] These are government bonds. (transition thudding) Even if you know nothing about
them, you might have heard. - Treasuries have proven
always to be a reliable, safe haven investment. - Recession fears have caused investors to flee to safe investments
like Treasury Bonds. - U.S. Treasury Bonds are
a pretty safe investment. - Nothing can touch them - [Jordan] But there's a caveat. Not all bonds are the same. Some let you take a bit of
a gamble by selling them. And if you do, like
Silicon Valley Bank had to, you introduce the one thing that everyone says bonds don't have, risk. We break down how the fail
safe investment can fail. And why despite that,
bonds are still so safe. (gentle music) (upbeat music) Bonds are IOUs. - The government gets a
lot of money from taxes but it spends more money. So it has to borrow money. - [Jordan] And that's where bonds aka Treasury securities come in. You give the government money and it promises to give
it back at a later date with some interest. And the government takes
this promise very seriously. This makes bonds an ideal
investment if safety, rather than a large return,
is an investor's top priority. Bonds tend to be a popular
investment tool for retirees, investors looking to add some
cushion to their portfolio, or parents looking to start
their kids' college fund. And the bond market, as we know it today, can be traced all the way
back to the First World War. (tape whirring) - [Narrator] From a
pistol shot at Sarajevo, the first the great
modern world wars explode. - [Jordan] In 1917, the U.S. government
released Liberty Loans, a type of bond meant to
garner public support and funds for the war. People could cash them in
typically 10 to 30 years later. Ultimately, Liberty Bonds
raised more than $17 billion. That's 2/3 of the funds America raised for the First World War. It marked the birth of
the modern Treasury market and introduced investing
to many Americans. ♪ We've got another bond to buy. ♪ - The government issued more
war bonds during World War II. After the war, they were
converted to savings bonds. - [Narrator] It's your future. Build for it, save for it. Buy shares in it. - [Jordan] We still have
savings bonds today. Like war bonds, they can only be bought
directly from the government, and you can't sell them. Though, you can transfer
them to people as gifts. - (indistinct) gift, Merry Christmas. - Thank you. - [Jordan] The only thing
that could prevent you from getting your money when
your savings bonds mature is if the Treasury defaulted. Okay, it wouldn't look like that, but the government defaulting on its debts would be catastrophic. However, it's incredibly
unlikely to happen. - The fact that everybody thinks that treasuries are safe
helps make them safe. Investors around the world
just pile into treasuries. That makes it very, very easy for the U.S. government
to raise more money in the bond market. - [Jordan] This perpetuates a cycle. People buy bonds from the government. The government spends the money. It issues new bonds. And then it uses some
of the new bond money to pay everyone back. Plus. - The US government can always raise taxes or cut spending in order to
pay back its bond holders. - [Jordan] So the way to
introduce risk to bonds really comes from, well, you. Not all bonds function like savings bonds. Take these securities, Treasury
Bills, Notes, and Bonds you can buy in the primary market, meaning you get them new
in a government auction. Or the secondary market, meaning you buy them from another seller. And unlike savings bonds,
you can sell these bonds to someone else in the secondary
market before they mature. But if you do, you introduce risk. So why take a perfectly safe investment and make it less safe? - The benefit of the secondary market is that if you need the money,
you can always sell the bond. And you don't have to wait 10
years until the bond matures. - [Jordan] But if you sell a bond, you're not guaranteed to get
the face value you paid for it. That's because a bond's
value in this market is always changing. In that way, the bond market looks a
bit like the stock market. To understand how this risk
works in the real world, let's look at Silicon Valley Bank - Silicon Valley Bank was
getting a lot of money in from the tech sector, and it needed a place to put that money. - [Jordan] So it bought
billions of dollars of medium to longer term notes and bonds for the same reason anyone buys them, they're a safe place to
park money for a while. However, at the time the
bank bought these bonds, the interest rate on the bonds was low. If the bank had been able to
hold its bonds to maturity, then the interest rate
wouldn't have mattered. The bank would've cashed in
their billions, plus interest, and that would've been that. Instead, a few things went wrong. to ease rising inflation, the Treasury increased interest rates. And when interest rates
rise, bond prices fall. This left a roughly 17 billion gap between what the bank paid for the bonds and what their value was, putting the bank in a bad position. To get more cash and buy newer bonds, Silicon Valley Bank had to
sell some of their bonds at a loss in the secondary market. This helped trigger a run on the bank and led to its collapse. Now, this is an extreme example of what can go wrong in the bond market. - What happened to Silicon
Valley Bank is not the norm. Most people aren't forced to sell billions of dollars of
bonds at a big loss. If you have to sell them early, you probably won't see a big loss. And you could even see a gain if interest rates are falling. - Ultimately, there are
still no safer investments than government bonds. - Stock prices can go
down like 4% in a day. On a day-to-day basis, you don't have that risk if
you're buying and selling bonds that you do have in the stock market. - [Jordan] That's why they say. - Nothing can touch them. - [Jordan] Well, almost nothing.
