Being a bond investor was about seeking safety, calculable certainty. Optimism was for stock investors, people who had zero claim on the assets, who bought a story about growth, potential, and the future and hoped to ride it to the moon. Their upside was hypothetically infinite, but their investment could go to zero. They bet on faith in corporate management, instead of the black-and-white promises of bond documents, the covenants that limited the borrower’s ability to make dumb choices.
