Sooner or later, interest rates are going to rise sharply from current levels. And that'll hurt.
Bill Gross.
FORTUNE -- What do you call a supposedly safe investment in which a five-week hiccup can wipe out more than a year of income? Answer: a bond mutual fund.
Yes, that sounds extreme, if not demented. But it's true—as I'll show you in a bit, using numbers from the nation's biggest mutual fund, Pimco Total Return, which is run by bond-dom's most prominent investor, Bill Gross.
If you're a typical investor—especially, if you're a typical investor of my age (68)—you've heard for decades about bonds providing a safe haven. But as people like my Fortune colleagueShawn Tully and I have been warning you for quite awhile now, buying bonds at today's ultra-low interest rates isn't at all safe.
