IBond 2020: Should You Subscribe?

TL;DR

YES. You can earn HKD 400-800 per issue on the first-day risk-free. However, you cannot earn big money since at most, you can subscribe for 3 lots due to the allocation strategy.

Basic Bond Information

According to the press release on 5 October 2020, the Hong Kong Government will issue a new bond. (The last issue was four years ago.)

Why Risk Free?

Let’s look at a bond issued by the Hong Kong Government with the same year of maturity. The yield to maturity of such bond is just 0.031% and priced at 109.346. With exactly the same issuer and year of maturity, ibond offers much higher interest with a lower price.

What will happen? Right after the bond is listed, the market will adjust the price of IBond upwards.

How Much Can I Earn?

In absolute terms, not much. According to the experience in the year 2016, the maximum number of lots one can subscribe was 3.

According to the bond yield calculator, the price of IBond should be 105.9 to match that of yield to maturity of other Hong Kong Government Bond with the same maturity. That means, at least, you can earn HKD 590 per issue.

If CPI is expected to be higher than 2% by the market, the bond price will be even higher.

Sounds like a good deal for me. Subscribe and sell immediately after one or two days since the price appreciation is quite close to all the interests you will earn if hold to maturity.