With less competition and volatile markets, the investment Banks that are still standing have been earning fat margins trading in currencies, commodities and bonds.

随着竞争减少，市场依然不稳定，仍然挺立的投资银行在货币、大宗商品和债券交易中赚取了丰厚的利润。

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As Barclays Capital, a British investment bank, neatly puts it: "The entire asset class of bonds is characterised by symptoms of overvaluation and complacency."

一家英国投资银行，巴克莱资本公司巧妙地说：“债券这整个的资产种类都表现为价值高估和没有意识到风险的自满状态。”

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Mr Hintz sees it as an encouraging sign that none of the investment banks issuing bonds in the second half of August pointed to new “material” risks, as required when a company raises debt.

Hintz先生认为在八月下半个月没有投资银行因为债务提高, 而发行债券以解决”缺钱”的问题.

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And then there seems to have been a third hedge taken out, described in today's Wall Street Journal as "protection on investment-grade bonds" - which appears to have been protection against the risk that the second hedge went wrong.

BBC: Does JP Morgan loss show regulators' great failure?

The other metric that we follow very closely is credit spreads, and this is the difference between the yield between the sub-investment-grade bonds and the ten-year Treasuries, where the recent monthly returns in the stock market is favorable, when credit spreads are normal, compared to when spreads are very wide.

FORBES: How Moving Averages Gauge Index Strength

While his dollars were enjoying the security of the world's safest investment - Treasury bonds have never failed to pay out - most US investors were taking a financial "rain-check" and cancelling their summer vacations.

BBC: Greenspan plays it safe