Bond traders with little to do turn to risky bets Bloomberg When Kevin Shih started his career as a fixed-income trader in Taiwan five years ago, local government bonds accounted for 70 percent of his portfolio. Now, it is less than one-tenth. “I haven’t done a single Taiwan government bond deal so far this year,” said Shih, a proprietary trader at JihSun Securities Co (日盛證券) in Taipei. Paltry yields and low volatility are driving Shih and his peers out of Taiwan’s NT$5.7 trillion (US$201.14 billion) sovereign debt market, sending daily transactions in benchmark 10-year notes to record lows. Traders are turning instead to riskier wagers overseas, an echo of the years-long shift in Japan that’s poised to funnel more and more Taiwanese cash into global markets.