Blain’s Morning Porridge Feb 10th, 2026 – Bond Market Alarm Bells Sounding“Feche le vache..”Did someone say Century Bond? What’s not to like about the bond market? Rates are going to fall! Everyone wants to buy credit (at historically tight spreads) and the biggest most successful firms on the planet are paying 70 cents over Treasuries for your money! What could possibly go wrong? 100-year Sterling bonds from Google? Wow. That’s…. interesting. (Ding, Ding, Ding…. Bond market alarms going off very loudly in my head.)What do the buyers of that Century bond know that we don’t? There are so many reasons not to buy a corporate Century bond – but clearly there is demand for them. I’ll come back to 100-year bonds below, but the succession of massive public (and private) AI Hyperscale debt deals to fund the datacentre build out has had my bond spidey-senses on edge for some time now.Google’s century bonds y’day sent them into overdrive.The sheer volume of debt being raised for AI is off the historical scale. There are estimates of $700-900 bln of funding to be raised by the Hyperscalers this year. Google raised $20 bln of its announced $185 bln 2026 funding ask yesterday. Oracle attracted a $130 bln order book for a recent $25 bln deal – despite many market analysts fearful of its weak financials, over-stretched debt profile, and reliance on OpenAI being able to pay the leases on its compute. Amazon and Microsoft are in the market funding as much as they can.Some say $3 trillion will be raised over 5 years. It’s extraordinary, but apparently, it’s not a problem because these are some of America’s largest and most successful companies – what can possibly go wrong? (Why did Enron, WorldCom, WaMu and the big 3 Autos just flash through my memory?)Recently I’ve written about the potential of a Corporate Bond Burp – not necessarily a complete credit meltdown, but a market that’s got ahead of itself that’s about to suffer chronic indigestion. The “Burp” is the warning it’s all about to happen – that the underlying assumptions behind a trade or a wider rally were mis-founded.Reasons for suspecting a Bond-Burp is imminent include the circularity arguments around AI firms funding and backing each other through datacentre leases and compute, the historically tight credit spreads in the corporate markets, and multiple questions about what is supporting what in the complex debt ecosystem.Should I be worried?

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

Transcript

Related