Sky News has an interesting story on the competence of the revered Bank of England:
[https://news.sky.com/story/the-big-story-from-bank-of-england-is-an-easing-in-tightening-to-avert-massive-losses-13433278]
During Quantitative Easing (QE) - now called 'tightening' as 'easing' sounded a lot like a financal fart - the bank printed hundreds of billions money (i.e. credit) to inject capital into the market (i.e. not give it to you and me to spend) and then spent a lot of it on Government bonds (i.e. Government debt) so lots of the money it printed was actually loaned back to the government.
Then, as Sky News reports:
Roll on a decade-and-a-half and the Bank of England had about £895bn worth of bonds sitting on its balance sheet, bought during the various spurts of QE - a couple of spurts during the financial crisis, another in the wake of the EU referendum and more during COVID.
Some of those bonds were bought at low prices but, especially during the pandemic, they were bought for far higher prices (or, since the yield on these bonds moves in opposite directions to the price, at lower yields).
Then, three years ago, the Bank began to reverse QE. That meant selling off those bonds. And while it bought many of those bonds at high prices, it has been selling them at low prices. In some cases it has been losing astounding amounts on each sale.
Take the 2061 gilt. It bought a slug of them for £101 a go, and has sold them for £28 a piece. Hence realising a staggering 73% loss.
One wonders who is covering those losses - surely not the UK taxpayer?
And there's more...
Well, the total losses expected on the Bank of England's Quantitative Tightening programme ("tightening" because it's the opposite of easing) is a whopping £134bn, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility.
That's a lot of money. Even the UK economy is only around £20-40 billion in the hole depending on who you ask.
Buy high - sell low.
So don't feel bad if you had to do it with your personal stock/bond holdings, after all the Bank of England does it and they are financial experts right?