How will Goldman Sachs be faring in 2060? How robust will the public finances of Mexico be in 2110?

These, and other equally imponderable questions, are among those being posed to investors amid a flurry of high-profile very long-dated bond issues.

Alongside 100-year Mexican debt and 50-year Goldman paper, investors have been offered, and readily accepted, 50-year issues from utility group GDF Suez, railroad operator Norfolk Southern, Rabobank of the Netherlands and the Italian government.

To some, a willingness among investors to take on the often extreme inflation, interest rate, credit and sovereign risk embedded in these securities, in exchange for a modest uptick in yield, is a surefire sign of an overheated bond market.

"We are definitely at the early stages of a corporate bond bubble. Companies and governments are taking advantage of it by issuing long-dated debt," says Stuart Ratcliff, chief investment officer of the Matrix Credit Opportunities fund.

"I think it's akin to covenant lite [which arguably signalled the top of the bull market in credit in 2007]. The fact that investors are prepared to invest for 50 or 100 years shows they are desperate for yield and are buying anything."

Horacio Valeiras, chief investment officer at Allianz Global Investors, raises his eyebrows at the deals, given how few companies survive 50 years and the fact that, during the past century, sovereign bond investors in countries such as Argentina, Germany and Russia have suffered heavy losses.

David Fuller's view Those who have also been reading the Historic Archive copies of Fullermoney from the mid-1980s, posted on most Friday's, will have been reminded of what was a truly great bull market environment for long-dated bonds. Those days will return but not before too many investors suffer capital losses in their current bond positions, I fear.

I worry about the Baby Boomers in particular. Too many of them were hurt when the dotcom bubble burst and then again during the 2008 stock market meltdown. They then rushed into bonds, understandably, during all the "depression / deflation" talk. That was a good medium-term trend which is now ending or over.

What else would anyone sensibly expect following a 30-year decline in long-dated yields! If one wants fixed income, I would avoid the West and only consider the New Capital Wealthy Nations Bond Fund, or its equivalent, first mentioned by Tim Price some months ago and again in his letter posted on Monday. Please read at least his penultimate paragraph and the Fund is listed in the Chart Library.

My personal preference for yield is in equities qualifying as dividend 'aristocrats', which Eoin has reviewed on several occasions and will no doubt do so again. You can find his earlier comments by Searching the site under 'aristocrats' and the charts are also in the Library.