RMB Bonds - revisited

As recently as September I asked myself whether RMB denominated bonds were a worthwhile investment . My conclusion was that while RMB bonds were fine for RMB which I already hold (which is not much), I could get better yields on equities so it didn't make a lot of sense to convert HKD into RMB in order to buy the bonds. I also felt that the China A50 Tracker fund was a better (although riskier) way to invest in the RMB. I purchased shares in some small caps and the China A50 Tracker fund last month - so far a good call, although the returns over a single month are not really that meaningful.

More recently, the market has rallied and (IMHO) the risk of investing in equities has gone up with the market. Also, with retirement getting closer, I need to start getting used to the idea that I need to have at least some of my money into low risk investments and accept the the correspondingly low returns.

The latest offering is from China Development Bank and offers a yield of 2.7% (which will get cut to around 2.5% after bank charges and FX conversion spreads) with a term of three years. It's not a great deal as the upside is limited, but it is better than leaving cash in the bank. Also, if I buy a series of these sorts of short dated investments with differing but generally short maturity dates (probably in a variety of currencies), this will form part of the cash/near cash asset allocation that I will need to have in place in retirement.

Accordingly, I have converted some more HKD to RMB (currently limited to a maximum of RMB20,000 per day) and made an application. I suspect that the application will be scaled back due to over subscriptions, but there will no doubt be no shortage of additional RMB bond issues.