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We conjecture that mutual funds with large shares of outstanding bond issues are more inclined to internalize the negative price spillovers of fire sales and thus sell their holdings in those issues, to a lower extent, when they experience redemptions. We provide evidence consistent with this conjecture and further show that ownership concentration limits bonds' exposures to flow-induced fire sales. We exploit variation in negative spillovers arising from the Fed's SMCCF to confirm the economic mechanism and explore our findings' implications for fund performance and fire-sale spillovers to other funds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The aim of the article is to examine whether inflation-indexed treasury bonds issued by the Polish Minister of Finance protect investors’ capital against the negative consequences of an increase in the price level. Design/methodology/approach: The condition which has to be met in order to achieve a positive net rate of return in real terms has been established. The historical and current rates of return on investment in the inflation-indexed treasury bonds issued by the Polish Minister of Finance were analysed to check whether they meet this condition. Findings: Own research has shown that in general, operation principle of bonds indexed to inflation should allow the investor to gain protection from negative effects of price changes. Yet, the example of Polish treasury bonds shows that systematic reduction of interest premiums for the subsequent series of issued instruments, changes in the operation principles, negative effect of taxation and materialisation of the defined in article time-shift mismatch risk – in the high-inflation environment results in significantly negative values of the current net rates of return in real terms of the latest series of COI and EDO bonds. This means that these bonds have not protected investors from the negative effects of price increases and loss of purchase power of invested capital. Research limitations/implications: The levels of real rates of return calculated in the way presented in the article, i.e. based on official data of the Statistics Poland, are representative for the entire economy, yet do not have to translate into the same value for the individuals – real rates of return calculated appropriately for the individual investor may vary in both ways and therefore be more or less favourable than presented in the article. Originality/value: The demand for these investment products is increasing, which is surprising in the light of the article’s findings. That may, result from investors’ expectations regarding a decrease in inflation in the coming periods, as well as the fact that, despite the negative profitability in real terms, these instruments can more effectively minimize the real-term losses stemming from inflation than other types of investments of a similar risk level (deposits, savings accounts) what can be furtherly reviewed in the next research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beliefs of professional forecasters are benchmarked against those of a Bayesian econometrician BE who is learning about the unknown dynamics of the bond risk factors. Consistent with rational Bayesian learning, the forecast errors of individual professionals and BE are comparably predictable over the business cycle. The secular and cyclical patterns of professionals' forecasts relative to those of BE are explored in depth. Inconsistent with many models with belief dispersion, the relationship between professionals' yield disagreement and their matched disagreements about macroeconomic fundamentals is very weak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]