---
title: "With the 10-Year at 5.365%, Wealth Advisors Tell Clients to Come Back to Bonds"
description: "Yields at two-decade highs mean munis and Treasuries now pay near equity-like returns, advisors say"
author: "Luis Goa"
published: 2026-10-10T10:00:01Z
modified: 2026-10-10T14:34:49Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/with-the-10-year-at-5-365-wealth-advisors-tell-clients-to-co-1477f0
language: en
tags: ["bonds", "yields", "municipal-bonds", "investing", "inflation", "finance"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# With the 10-Year at 5.365%, Wealth Advisors Tell Clients to Come Back to Bonds

*Yields at two-decade highs mean munis and Treasuries now pay near equity-like returns, advisors say*

By Luis Goa · October 10, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/with-the-10-year-at-5-365-wealth-advisors-tell-clients-to-co-1477f0

## In brief

- The 10-year Treasury yield hit 5.365% Wednesday, highest in more than two decades; the 30-year reached 5.732%
- The 10-year yield’s record low was 0.318% in March 2020
- Nuveen estimates top-rated 30-year munis at 5.13% equal an 8.67% taxable yield for top-bracket investors
- J.P. Morgan’s Gupta calls yields a compelling entry point and says munis are cheapest since at least 2011
- Cresset’s Silverman advises staying at AA-rated munis or better and setting duration by client goals

The 10-year Treasury yield hit 5.365% on Wednesday, its highest level in more than two decades, and the 30-year reached 5.732%, [CNBC reported](https://cnbc.com/2026/10/10/advisors-to-the-ultra-wealthy-steer-clients-back-to-bonds.html). In March 2020, the 10-year yield printed a record low of 0.318% — Wednesday’s level is nearly 17 times that. Advisors to high-net-worth clients told CNBC the selloff has created a rare window: returns that approach what equities deliver on average, in instruments where the main risk is that rates rise further, not that the borrower defaults.

The mechanics are simple. A bond’s price moves opposite its yield, so a selloff reprices the same coupon stream more cheaply; buying now locks the higher yield if held to maturity. Jason Katz, managing director and senior portfolio manager at UBS Wealth Management, called it, “frankly, a generational opportunity to actually create ballast in your portfolio and create income. You need to be a buyer here.” His pitch is to “buy from the fearful and sell to the greedy,” though he said some clients are reluctant after years of near-zero rates made bonds unattractive. “I find myself like all day, every day explaining the dynamic of how fixed income works because up until recently people didn’t have to pay as much attention to it,” he said.

## The tax math on municipal bonds

For investors in the top brackets, interest on municipal bonds is exempt from federal income tax, which changes the comparison with taxable debt. Yields on top-rated 30-year munis reached 5.13% on October 1, according to Nuveen. For an investor paying the top federal rate plus the net investment income tax — a combined 40.8% — Nuveen estimated that is equivalent to an 8.67% taxable yield. The arithmetic checks out on its own terms: 5.13 divided by (1 − 0.408) is 8.67. Whether it beats stocks depends on what stocks do, which is the part nobody quotes in advance.

Katz estimates intermediate- and longer-term munis now offer tax-equivalent yields within one to two percentage points of the stock market’s average return, without equity-level risk, and says short- and intermediate-term bonds currently offer the most value per unit of duration. He also advises clients to use the selloff for tax-loss harvesting — selling depreciated bonds to realize losses against gains, then reinvesting in better-yielding debt.

J.P. Morgan Private Bank is formally neutral on bonds, but Kriti Gupta, executive director and global investment strategist there, called current yields “a compelling entry point.” “We are not pounding the table and saying buy, buy, buy,” she said. “We’re saying you should be exposed across the board. And if you’re sitting in cash — which a lot of clients are, by the way — and you’re looking for a moment to enter the market, this could be a moment to do that.” She said municipal bonds are the cheapest they have been since at least 2011, a comparison based on their prices relative to Treasuries.

Mike Silverman, chief investment officer at Cresset, set a credit floor: nothing below AA-rated munis. He argued duration should follow the client’s goals and liquidity needs rather than the yield on offer, and framed the real risk as behavioral. “You have to design a program for your clients where they will never be a forced seller, because that’s how you destroy wealth,” he said. A holder forced to sell a 30-year bond into a rising-rate market takes the price loss that a hold-to-maturity investor never realizes.

One caveat the pitch contains but does not stress: “highest in more than two decades” describes the past, not a ceiling. Buying a 5.365% 10-year is a bet that yields do not go to 6% — a bet some traders have been [positioning against the other way](https://rews.cc/a/a-ten-cent-bet-against-the-bond-rout-placed-half-an-hour-bef-457f0c), loading up on long-bond calls for a reversal. The measure to watch is whether the 10-year holds the 5.3% line it crossed when it [hit 5.25% at the end of September](https://rews.cc/a/10-year-treasury-yield-hits-5-25-highest-since-2007-f5731a), or whether the “generational opportunity” gets more generational.