Bond markets show remarkable resilience

If bond markets are the only indices you look at to judge world events, you could be forgiven for thinking the past month or so has been fairly uneventful.

Only a major earthquake in Japan, the spectre of a nuclear disaster, the intervention of NATO forces in Libya, a spike in oil prices, the request for EU aid from Portugal and the first rate hike by a major Western central bank (the ECB) for some years. Oh, and the possibility of a government shut down in the US over the budget as a warm up to debt ceiling negotiations. Nothing much to worry about then. To be fair, events did cause something of an inter-month dip in markets, but the resilience overall has been remarkable, and slightly irritating as we entered the month in a more cauti...