Caracas Chronicles

I keep promising Juan I’ll stop boring readers with these bond stories, but then I can’t resist. Check out today’s New York Times story on the superhot market for African sovereign debt:

Ghana raised about $1 billion with a coupon, or interest rate, of 8.125 percent on a bond coming due in 2026; it is now trading just below 8 percent, compared to about 2.3 percent for an analogous United States Treasury bond.

Ivory Coast priced a 10-year bond more favorably this summer at 5.6 percent, despite defaulting three years ago during a civil war. Investors have become more bullish since the fighting ended and political tensions have eased. The yield on the bond is now slightly above 6 percent.

For reference, Venezuela’s 2027 bonds are now yielding 17.7%.

Did you catch that? Venezuela is now seen as around three times riskier than an African country that defaulted amid civil war just three years ago.