IL53: How Bonds Quietly Built the Modern World ft. Robin Wigglesworth

Robin Wigglesworth (0:01)

That kind of became the zeitgeist. This is unfair. And some of them are bad, some of them will default. But broadly speaking, if you have a broad enough diversified basket, you'll make out like a bandit.

And that was the cornerstone realization of what became a pretty incredible junk bond empire.

SPEAKER_2 (0:23)

Welcome to Top Traders Unplugged. In markets, success doesn't come from predicting what happens next. It comes from being prepared for what you can't predict.

In each episode, we go deep with some of the world's most thoughtful minds in investing, economics and beyond, to understand how they think, how they prepare and how they decide, and the experiences that shaped how they see the world. No noise, no shortcuts, just real conversations to help you think better and invest with confidence.

Kevin Coldiron (0:56)

Welcome everyone to Top Traders Unplugged. My name is Kevin Coldiron, and I'm host of the Ideas Lab Series, where we talk with authors of new books that help us understand and navigate the global economy.

Our guest today is Robin Wigglesworth. He's a long-time financial journalist and currently editor of the Financial Times influential Alphaville blog. He's the author of the book Trillions, which traces the evolution and future of passive investing. And he's here today to talk about his brand new book, coming out in September, A Fabulous Debt, the epic story of how bonds built the modern world. Robin, thanks so much for joining us and welcome to the show.

Robin Wigglesworth (1:40)

No, thanks for inviting me, Kevin. I've been looking forward to it.

Kevin Coldiron (1:43)

So first of all, I feel like I have to start off by congratulating you on your market timing. I mean, you've managed to release a book about the bond market, just when pretty much all anyone can talk about is the bond market. How did you manage to pull that off?

Robin Wigglesworth (1:58)

Kevin, how dare you? The bond market is always interesting, always.

No, I mean, I was always worried because I finished the book just before Liberation Day in 2025, the first draft. It's like, oh my God, should we try to rush this out? The publisher pointed out the multitude of logistical issues around this, but also just the fact that ideally a book, if there is something going on that is particularly pertinent, that's great, but you write a book to stand the test of time, so you can't try and, it's like market timing, you shouldn't try to go crazy doing so. But I felt always confident that there's always something interesting going on in the fixed income market somewhere in the world, and low there is right now again.

Kevin Coldiron (2:43)

Yeah. Well, it's interesting that you say that about your publisher, because really this is a history book, it's about the history of the bond market.

I'd actually like to start off with a quote about history from your introduction.

You quote Lytton Strachey, who was a biographer and I think also a close friend of Keynes, who says, ignorance is the first prerequisite of the historian. I'm curious how you interpret this, because I have to say I've thought quite a lot about it since reading it. To me, it means we should clear our minds of preconceived notions when we think about history. But then on the other hand, if we're always clearing our minds, what is the value of learning history? What do we take away? I'm curious just why you chose to use that quote and what it means to you.

Robin Wigglesworth (3:39)

It's a great question actually, because I thought a lot about it as well when I came across it in a different book.

I mean, for me, it has two meanings, both of which felt very relevant for this. One thing is, yes, start without those preconceived notions. I mean, we can't entirely ignore lessons, the histories of the, sometimes the knee-jerk prejudices we might have, but try to start from a place of ignorance, because almost of the journey becomes more joyful than discovering things for the first time, or relearning things, or seeing things you thought you knew from a radically different perspective.

The other part is also something that's relevant for certainly historians, but also just journalists, in that the world is immensely complex, and we need to find a balance between embracing that nuance, the complexity in writing about it, and also writing in a clear way that we need to bring forth the core truth, as it were. I mean, not stretch things, but maybe cut off stuff that's extraneous. I mean, you work in a financial environment, a lot of, like, for good traders, it's about cutting out stuff that isn't actually essential, to hone in on what actually matters. That doesn't mean you're not seeing an entire picture, but you're focusing on the factors that matter the most. For a journalist writing a thousand years of bond market history, there are so many, I guess, tech people who call it side quests, I could have gone down, and some of which broke my heart not to pursue. So I love writing about sovereign debt restructuring, countries going bankrupt. And there is a bit of that in the book, but I was going to have a whole section on it. And I realized it was fascinating, especially to me, but it wasn't really that essential. Then there's like the issue of linkers. There's the linking, like an inflation-proof bond were invented in the US, even before the US existed as a country, Massachusetts has issued them. And they're fascinating as well. There's so many other aspects that are interesting that I didn't really, I felt I needed to clarify by simplifying. And other things, I didn't think I was going to write, that I did end up writing about instead.