Mini-Bowies

Bowie bonds were created in 1997 when the current and future revenues of the 25 albums David Bowie  recorded prior to 1990 were pooled and sold as bonds. Prudential Insurance, which purchased the entire $55 million bond issue, received a 7.9 percent coupon over the next 10 years. One advantage of such an asset is the correlation with more traditional assets, like stocks and bonds, tends to be low. Now, a marketplace exists to sell music royalties and the cash flows from other intellectual property in auctions for as low as $4,000 each. Yields on these instruments is as high as 20 percent, although we should warn you that any yield that high does entail significant risk.