Anchors aweigh! Put thoughts of the Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly movie aside. If the Naval Academy fight song is playing in your head, tune it out.

The anchors being raised here are setting adrift perceptions that government bonds always are low-risk investments.

Behavioral finance — a field of study that explains why investors do what they do — tells us that investors have been known to make decisions based on faulty reasoning. In some cases, they tend to classify new information based on experience or knowledge.

For instance, people who adhere to the idea that U.S. government bonds are low-risk investments might be inclined to take in stride news that geopolitical tensions pushed bond yields lower the past two weeks. Who cares that yields are at a low for the year? Government bonds are not risky investments, right?

Not necessarily.

While it’s true that U.S. Treasury bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, they still are subject to unpredictable changes in the markets. One thing to remember is interest rates and bond prices interact like children on a seesaw. When interest rates go down, bond prices go up. When interest rates go up, bond prices go down.

Bond prices generally have been going up since the early 1980s; and rates currently are at very low levels. As economies recover and rates start to rise again, bond prices are likely to fall and could have a negative effect on the value of portfolios holding government bonds, particularly those with longer durations.

Bond yields have stayed low during recent years largely because of the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy. James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, recently said there is a mismatch between our macroeconomic goals and the stance of monetary policy.

While this mismatch is not causing problems for the economy, it may in the future. Soon, Fed officials are expected to discuss when and how to begin lifting rates from near zero — a level they’ve been at since 2008.

For those of you who find government bonds boring and would like to make a little extra money, you may want to look into video games as a competitive sport. Surprisingly, e-sport competitions can be quite lucrative.

If you’re one of those people who have a hard time thinking of chess or poker as sports, the idea of video games as sports probably will throw you for a loop. However, ESPN.com recently featured The International — the fourth annual world championships of the popular video game “Defense of the Ancient 2.”

The event, which was held in KeyArena in Seattle, sold out. In addition, more than 300,000 people watched it on a popular video game streaming website.

Total prize money for the tournament was $10.9 million, a record for video game competitions, and all the more remarkable because fans raised much of the prize money.

The League of Legends championship, another big gaming competition, is coming up in October. Two teams will compete in Sangam Stadium in Seoul, South Korea, for bragging rights, the Summoner’s Cup and $1 million in prize money. Last year’s championship “was watched by more people than the NBA Finals, World Series and BCS (Bowl Championship Series) National Championship [college football],” USA Today reported.

So perhaps all those hours your kids spent wasting away in front of their computer wasn’t a waste after all — they were just doing a little career research!

Tommy Williams is a certified financial planner with Williams Financial Advisors LLC., 6425 Youree Drive, Suite 180.

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