Becky the junk bond: Where is she now?

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2021

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2019, we bought a junk bond and named her Becky. Two years later, Becky has been on a journey that's included Chapter 11 bankruptcy and reorganization. On today's show, Becky's journey finally comes to an end as we see how much we made on our investment.

Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:11.5	2021 has been a year of extremes in so many ways.
0:15.7	Take investing.
0:17.3	This year, investors poured billions of dollars into the stock market, precious metals,
0:22.4	spacks, cryptocurrency, NFTs, also bonds.
0:26.3	That is right. Here at the Indicator, we have a personal stake in the bond
0:29.8	market. We even bought a junk bond back in 2019.
0:33.3	Yes, we did. And here we are buying our bond back then with producer
0:36.8	Starias Raffion and Lena Sonskiri.
0:39.7	So I'm hovering over it. Here we go. Place order processing.
0:46.2	Thank you. Your order has been placed.
0:49.4	We bought a bond in a company called Hornbeck Offshore Services.
0:53.2	It was the cheapest bond that we could find.
0:56.1	And it actually was not all that cheap. It cost us about 600 bucks.
1:00.0	I feel like we need to name the bond.
1:02.4	So it's a company called Hornbeck Offshore Services.
1:06.5	Becky.
1:07.4	Oh, we like Becky.
1:08.7	Oh, Becky with the good yield.
1:10.7	You better call Becky with the good hair.
1:15.6	Fantastic. The Beyonce reference. Love it.
1:19.6	So a bond is like a little loan that you give a company.
	...

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