NPR.

If you've checked your retirement account online lately, well, my advice would be probably

not to...

Agreeing with me here is our Planet Money colleague, Mary Childs.

Hi, thanks for having me, excited to be here.

We're very excited to have you too.

But yeah, this year has been really gnarly for financial markets.

It's been bad for stocks, it's been bad for cryptocurrencies, and even for the bond market.

This multi-trillion dollar market for the debt of governments and corporations and other

borrowers.

It's this corner of the financial universe that is meant to be a little bit more stable

than the world of stocks and speculative assets.

And the bond market vomiting is a big change.

We've had decades of it basically just going up.

And when markets are going up pretty much everyone does well.

A golden retriever with a bond fund would have probably done okay.

I would have invested.

I would have too, that's a very cute sounding fund.

In a huge bull market, skill kind of doesn't matter that much.

When the market turns though, that's when you really find out, as Warren Buffett says,

who has been swimming naked?

The golden retriever has been swimming naked.

...