If I offered to borrow money from you with no interest payments and promised to pay you back less than I borrowed in 10 years time, I guess that you would tell me where to go. I suppose you might be prepared to make such a loan to a family member or possibly a very close friend, but you certainly wouldn't consider it an investment.

Yet, this is what the German Government has just done. It recently issued a zero coupon bond on a negative 0.26% pa yield maturing in 2029 and 'investors' have been falling over themselves to apply.

Perhaps I'm just getting old but I'm struggling to make sense of it all.