Who wins from carnage in the credit markets?

THE FIRST rule of investment, according to , is not to lose money. The second rule is not to forget the first. That is true for no one more than bond-fund managers, whose job is to shelter their clients’ money from volatility while eking out what returns they can. The bloodbath in bond markets so far this year—America’s have had their , and Europe’s their biggest-ever peak-to-trough plunge—ought to be the ultimate nightmare for such timorous investors. Instead many are sighing in relief.After a brutal but brief crash when the world shut down in March 2020, and until the end of last year, rule number one was pretty easy to follow. Central banks were pumping $11trn of new funds into the markets via and . Governments offered unprecedented fiscal support for businesses to stop them going bust.