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Glossary Show All

Carry: Definition & Meaning | Bondfish

What it means

Think of carry as the reward for patience. When you own a bond, it accrues interest every day. If you funded the purchase with cash, your carry is essentially the yield you collect. If you borrowed to buy it, your carry is that income minus the interest you pay to borrow — what professionals call the cost of funding.

Carry is described as positive when the income earned exceeds the cost of holding, and negative when the cost is higher than the income. A high-coupon bond held with cheap or no financing has strong positive carry; a low-yielding bond financed at a higher short-term rate can have negative carry.

Why it matters for bond investors

Carry is the part of your return that does not depend on the market moving in your favour. Even if a bond's price stays flat, positive carry means you still come out ahead over time. That is why investors talk about being "paid to wait." Carry also frames a trade-off: reaching for more carry usually means taking more credit risk or more duration, so higher carry is rarely free.

Example

Coupon income earned over the period: +4.5%
Cost of financing the position: −3.0%
Net carry ≈ 4.5% − 3.0% = +1.5%

For a cash investor with no financing cost, the carry on that same bond is simply the +4.5% of income it accrues.

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