The “income” is back in “fixed income”, but what about the “fixed”?

Over the past two years, yields across fixed income segments have experienced multiple-fold increases. Core government bond yields are now out of negative territory, those on emerging market bonds have risen by a factor of two (from 4.5% to nearly 9%), and those on European high yield indices have gone from 2.3% to more than 7% – a threefold increase. And yields have now levelled off at these high rates.