(Fortune Magazine) -- Boring is beautiful - or so it feels in this time of wild and crazy stock market swings. In this case we're talking about investment-grade corporate bonds, which are dirt-cheap right now for the same reason that stocks are: The market turmoil has pounded down their prices. The result is historic opportunities in bonds issued by blue-chip companies.

Right now investment-grade bonds maturing in ten years or longer are yielding an average 8.4%, according to Barclays, a remarkable 5.7 percentage points more than ten-year Treasuries.

"Today's spreads are the highest we've seen since 1931,"

says economist Michael Darda of MKM Partners, a trading and research firm. Or as bond guru and PIMCO chief Bill Gross keeps saying, stocks are pricing in a recession, and bonds are priced for a depression. A depression isn't likely, so it's time to pounce.


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