Short-Term Paper

Bonds. Paper representations of money due. This piece of paper was bough 9.7 years ago and issued as 10 year paper. It now has about 3 months left before it pays its last interest payment of 30 bucks on that par value grand. It will also pay back the par value: $1,030 as a final payment, coming due in 83 days. You can buy that promise for $1,022 and make a very modest investment return but with very little risk. The bonds are already funded. The company who issued them has plenty of cash to pay back investors for letting them rent their cash for 10 years. And the short term paper market lives on. In fact, short term paper is an enormous multi trillion dollar industry, with many people hoping to get a bit more interest on their cash savings...so they buy tag ends of corporate bonds coming due soon. See: Commercial Paper...because that's what this is and it trades in the form of Money Market Funds if you want to buy baskets of paper nearly due, more or less a mutual fund of short term paper. Like a money salad. Eat it fresh.