leverage helps on the way up but hurts on the way down amplifying both gains and losses that’s what closedend bond fund investors learned the hard way in 2022 last year barron’swarned of the “debt time bomb” inside such funds as interest rates rose bond prices move inversely with rates and leverage made things worse with the market prices of some levered bond closedends such as pioneer municipal high income opportunities ticker mio falling by almost 40 last year the funds typically trade at premiums or discounts to their underlying net asset values