Bond Pain Seen Ending for Bears in Poll Saying They’re Right

After the legions of market savants missed out on hundreds of billions of dollars in gains this year anticipating a tumble in bonds, you’d think they would have found another target. You’d be wrong.

Given the chance to speculate on declines in only one asset class, 45 percent of investors, traders and analysts in a quarterly Bloomberg Global Poll conducted last week picked debt securities of some type as their top choice, more than three times the percentage who selected gold. Among the options, most chose government debt and junk bonds over assets that also included stocks, commodities, currencies and real estate.