Allan Sloan: “To be sure, there are going to be occasional up days in the Treasury market. But I think it’s safe to say that turkey time has arrived.” (SteveMcsweeny/Getty Images)

It’s taken a lot longer than I expected. But now, just in time for Thanksgiving, long-term U.S. Treasury securities finally seem to be turning into turkey investments.

Stock prices have risen to record levels since Election Day, with the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq and the Wilshire 5000 all setting new highs on Monday. Meanwhile, prices of long-term Treasury securities have fallen sharply.

Eyeball a few Bloomberg numbers, and you see that recent increases in long-term Treasury yields have inflicted losses on holders that were large enough to gobble up a good chunk of the total interest the securities will pay over their lifetimes.

I’ll show you one example — the 1-5/8 percent 10-year Treasury note issued this past May. The yield on this note — its interest rate divided by its market price — was 2.34 percent at Monday’s market close, up from 1.85 percent at Election Day’s close.

A half-point rise doesn’t sound like that big a deal. But it means that over a mere eight trading days, owners of this note got skewered by losses equal to almost three years of interest payments.

Here’s the math. From Election Day through Monday, the note’s price dropped to 93.30 percent of face value from 98.03 percent. That decline, $473 on a $10,000 note, is almost equal to the $487.50 of interest the note will pay over three years.

There have been lots of predictions the past few years, some from me, that buyers of low-yielding, long-term Treasury securities would get slaughtered. But until now, we skeptics have gotten stuffed.

I’ve acknowledged several times — most recently in July — that my prediction of a bond bloodbath hasn’t been fulfilled. But now, I think, I’m being proved right.

I’m going to skip over the question of why we’ve seen this rise in long-term Treasury rates, which the Fed doesn’t control directly the way it controls short-term rates. The reason for the rise, which I consider unclear despite the conventional wisdom that it (like almost everything else going on in the world) is related to Donald Trump’s election, doesn’t matter.

What matters is that we’ve got market reality reasserting itself. If you read financial history, you know that once reality rears its head, for whatever reason, market bubbles often pop quickly. I think that’s what is happening here — long-term Treasury rates were in bubble territory, and now the bubble is popping.

The tale of our 1-5/8 percent 10-year Treasury is instructive. It was issued to investors at 100.99 percent of face value on May 16. Its market price rose to 102.19 percent of face value in July, stuffing the coffers of the notes’ owners with paper profits.

But then the price began drifting down — and after Election Day, began to plummet.

If you bought this security when it was issued and still hold it, you’re looking at a six-month market-value loss of almost eight points — the difference between its 100.99 issue price and Monday’s 93.30 close. That 7.69 point drop in market value is close to half the 16.25 percent of interest the note will pay over its 10-year life.

Even if you don’t recognize the loss by selling, you’re still a loser, as our president-elect would say. Why? Because by buying six months ago, you got a yield of less than 1.6 percent on your money — but if you had waited until Monday, you could have gotten 2.34 percent. That’s close to 50 percent more.

Should the yield rise to 3.34 percent a year from now, a distinct possibility, you’ll own an 8.5-year security that will sell at about 87 percent of face value. Pretty ugly for someone who shelled out about 101 percent of face value for the note when it was issued six months ago.

Making matters worse for bondholders, retail investors are now dumping their bond funds. That puts pressure on bond prices because the funds have to sell some of their holdings to raise cash to cover redemptions.

To be sure, there are going to be occasional up days in the Treasury market, such as Monday, when the price of our 10-year note rose slightly. But I think it’s safe to say that Treasury turkey time has arrived. Gobble, gobble, gobble.

An end note: I’m going to do my best this week to set aside my concerns about divisiveness, markets and other things, and celebrate our quintessential American holiday. Hope you do, too. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.