'Treasury Inflation Protected Securities'
What is the catch? Why would anybody buy any other type of bond?

>3% "inflation" according to CPI
>vs
>8% annual monetary debasement
if you dont know the diff you deserve to be poor

>>60763021 (OP)
Basically this>>60763056

They aren't gonna let you actually beat real inflation, just how they calculate it.

>>60763021 (OP)
TIPS are great if you believe government inflation data. Short term TIPS are OK to hold if you want to anchor volatility.

>>60763021 (OP)
Imagine believing in the government's inflation numbers.
Maybe if they acknowledge 20% year over year inflation then TIPS would make sense to invest in.

The lower the risk of an investment instrument, the lower the expected return is, because the risk has to be artificially lowered by someone and they will charge for that service in comparison to the opportunity cost.
In this case, the government knows that their regular bonds and assets can beat inflation when averaged out over the long term, and so by indexing these bonds to the inflation they are actually charging you the difference between inflation and regular bond yields as a premium for the service of providing that indexing.
In essence, it's an insurance. If shit hits the fan and no other safe instruments can beat inflation anymore, then of course you'd be glad you bought these. Just like if you buy house insurance and you house burns down, they you'd be glad you had house insurance. But that's not the expected outcome. The expected outcome is that you just pay the insurance fee and not get anything in return.

>>60763021 (OP)
During this recent inflation surge, TIPS have been underperforming normal Treasury bonds.
I don't know much about TIPS and why they failed, but they did fail in providing protection against inflation.