Saying now "short or long of a lifetime" means nothing. In march 09, few spoke of a lifetime opportunities. But in september, october, november 08 : lot of candidates for suicide. "Lifetime opportunities" appear when : 1 everyone is dead / broke (march 09) and you still got money 2 or it is unknown (CDS subprime) I will add that noone would trust you if you tell it (real Estate in Miami in 2010). Shorting the bund? No crisis, well-known, trustable. Chris Mac
A lot of people saw the real estate crash of 2008 coming. It is just a matter of timing and handling the drawdown of continually irrational market.
If you are student of rates you should know that it is impossible to predict future rates with any kind of consistent accuracy.
no, not random, not at all random, just impossible to predict with any kind of consistent accuracy. When you look at it in the context of history, the price move is certainly not random and can trend very hard longer than many expected.
If you are referring to our great vaunted economists of the day predicting with any consistent accuracy I agree. If you are referring to traders I do not. Bond prices (and their inverse interest rates) are no different than any other market.