Low yield bonds are pretty much by definition the safest instrument around, that's why they're low yield. (High-yield aka junk bonds are the risky ones.) In S

Low yield bonds are pretty much by definition the safest instrument around, that's why they're low yield. (High-yield aka junk bonds are the risky ones.) In SVB's case, the risk was not in the bonds themselves, but in the facts that a) there was a yawning mismatch between the high interest they needed to pay out on deposits to stay competitive and the low interest they were getting on their locked-in capital, and b) their customers were heavily concentrated in a single industry, namely fickle VCs and their companies.