” How can bonds be in a bubble? The rates are so low as to be meaningless.”
Investors are seeing bonds as having no risk and they are bidding them up, which results in low yields. Bonds have interest rate risk. If interest rates spike up then the price of low-yielding bonds will fall. Long bonds are subject to greater interest rate risk than short paper. Stick to short paper right now and you will be okay. The time to buy long bonds is when interest rates are high.
I think we need to ‘splain to folks how bond trading works - ie, bonds are issued at par, heavy bidding means the price goes up, yield to maturity (or call) goes down, etc.
Got a quick reference URL you could flip up for folks?