My attention was drawn to an ad placed in The Irish Times on the 1st of January this year: The BCP Target Coupon Bond pays a fixed coupon of five per cent every year, provided a “European equity index” hasn’t fallen by more than 30 per cent since the start of the bond. It’s reasonably rare for an equity index to be down 30 per cent over a ten-year period. For example, The Stoxx Europe 600 is the benchmark European stock market index. Since its introduction in 1986, only in four years was the index lower than ten years later: a combination…

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