When Foreign Government Bonds (Sovereign) also give “buy low, sell high” opportunities

One of my favorite books is Ben Graham’s “The Intelligent Investor”. This page from the fourth revised edition (1973) gives a short but fascinating history of some amazing price swings in the not-too-obscure category of foreign government bonds, interesting in part because the government issuers aren’t around in the same form any more (Cuba had a communist revolution and faced embargoes from the US for 50 years, Congo gained Independence from Belgium, and Czechoslovakia split up and joined the EU).

One constant throughout: it is still better to buy low and sell high rather than the other way around.

Happy reading!

Tariq