Negative Yields on Bonds is opposite of Getting profit on your investment. This is some kind of new practice from world wide financial institute.
the interest rate is -0.05% for ten years. So a $100,000 bond under
those terms would be "discounted" to $100,501, give or take.
No, actually what you are going to get out from this investment is after 10 years when this investment is mature for liquidation, you will get return not even your principle $100,000 , but ( (Principle $100,000) minus (Negative Yields @ -0.05) Times ( 10 Years ) ) assume the rates are on simple annual rate.
Now anyone may wander why should someone going to buy this kind of investment where I am actually giving away not only possible profit also losing some of principle amount!
This might looks real odd, but there is other valid reason for issuing / investing on such kind of bond.
From investor prospective: Every asset has its own 'expense' for keeping ownership of it. This is also true for money/currency depending on its size. And other investment possibility and risk factor. The same way people maintain checking account with virtually no visible income vs. Savings account where bank issue some positive rate of interest with various time factor like annually/half-yearly/monthly. People with lower level of income but steady on flow choose savings where business personals go for checking one. Think of Millions of Ideal money with no secure investment opportunity have to option in real. Option one to keeping this large amount of money in hand, arranging all kind of security which involve extra expense, risk and headache where Option two is invest on bond issued by Government of country. Owner of that amount will go for second one even with negative yields on bonds where he is paying in return of security and risk free grantee of getting it back on time.
On Issuing Government prospective: Here government actually want people not to keep money idle investing bonds, but find any possible sector to invest which might profitable for both Investor + Grater Community ultimately country.
This is a basic understanding on issue/buy/selling of Negative interest bearing bond on market.
Hope I could explain it here. Not to mention, English is not my 1st language at all. So ignore my typo, grammatical error and welcome to fix it.
Cheers!