Negative interest on TIPS

If we have massive inflation you get the inflation adjustments. If we have deflation, then since the principal is not allowed to fall below the at-issue principal, you'll get a nice real return.

-- Rich Carreiro snipped-for-privacy@rlcarr.com

You may have noticed in the last few months that emerging market funds have stopped outperforming by much, and TIPs have sagged. In the emerging case, I think it is due to the BRIC countries having "emerged" and many funds not switching to remaining striving and vital economies like Indonesia, Peru, etc (but not advising a switch to the sketchier "frontier" economies).

BRICs haven't gotten comfortably rich, but the problem seems to be their gov'ts are beating back bubbles of success with clumsy instruments that leave the patient bloody, just like the developed world. What's needed are funds like the many "asia ex japan" but "emerging ex bric". I found another etf database to explore this at