When I was a child and my parents told me we were moving, I was terrified. I worried that I’d be an outcast at my new school, that the kids on the block would be brats and—worst of all—that I’d never see my best friend again.

That’s understandable when you’re 10. But what about when you’re an adult?

I felt the same way all over again recently, when The Wall Street Journal moved to a different part of town.

It’s an old saw that moving is among life’s most stressful experiences. I’d always thought it was because of the mad rush to stuff everything into boxes before the movers arrived. But as my colleagues and I have learned, moves are tough even if you’re packing little more than the contents of a desk. Indeed, moving offices can be as disorienting as moving homes.

First, the decision to go is not ours. And where we work affects almost every part of the day, from our commute to what we eat. Most important, the office layout shapes some of the most significant bonds in our lives: our work relationships.

Over and over, as my Journal colleagues arrived at our new office, I heard the same themes. “I feel like a junior-high kid coming into work every day, going in the wrong direction, ending up on the wrong floor, and just generally being such a total dork,” explains one reporter.

“It felt like we were the new kids at school—the new people we saw in the café looked like the girls you disliked in high school,” says another.

“It was literally that feeling of being lost in the hall. Where’s the bathroom? Who are all these people? Did I just turn a corner and stumble into a space where I don’t belong, like where the cool kids hang out?” says an editor.

It seemed that moving our office just a few miles had hurled us back into adolescence. We wandered around in search of our friends, whined that others had nicer desks
and flocked to lunch in droves, seeking safety in numbers.

Our ’tween behavior went on for weeks. One editor admits that at the elevator banks, she still keeps her head down and moves quickly, out of fear she will run into an ex-friend who works in our new building.

It’s no coincidence that my colleagues kept referencing junior high. “That’s a big period of insecurity in our lives,” says Rudy Nydegger, professor of management and psychology at Union Graduate College in Schenectady, N.Y. “It’s halfway between being a child and being an adult.”

Tell me about it. We’re all happy to have our jobs. And our new offices are spiffy—a vast improvement over our dumpy old space. But to the child within us, the angst feels instinctive.

Humans are creatures of habit—we have favorite chairs, coffee vendors and watering holes. If we change where we work, we may have to change all our haunts. This can take us far out of our comfort zone.

That explains one reporter’s reaction: “I felt like a cat whose owners had moved to a new house,” she says. “I was sort of sniffing around, looking for comfy corners.”

Of course, a move can really shake up an office’s social structure. It rearranges the company’s informal pecking order—the one based on who has the biggest office, the choicest view, the best desk.

“In their minds, a lot of people sort out the winners and the losers,” says Mitchell Marks, a psychologist and a professor of management at San Francisco State University. “Who is closer to the action, who is farther away, and where am I in all of this?”

People are jockeying for position. “We have come up with rules on physical boundaries,” reports one of my co-workers. “My colleague and I have decided that her space includes the little two-foot counter between us. So whenever my Rolodex or my tape recorder impinges on the edge of it … I pull them back. Otherwise I would be a ‘colonizer.’ ”

Even more significantly, the move upends our support network. Research shows we form the tightest workplace bonds with people who are near us. A change in the seating chart can rearrange friendships.

Sadly, my colleagues confirm this. One says she feels her buddies have forgotten her. Another explains that he no longer knows where to find certain people, so he doesn’t think about them as often.

One reporter feels like he’s been through a divorce. He says of colleagues he once sat near: “Now, I occasionally swing by their desks and wave or say hi, but it’s not the same. I’m not privy to all the jokes or burdens people share.”

But give us time. Just like junior-high-schoolers, we are slowly making new friends.

“I seem to laugh much more in this place,” says a graphic artist, citing the new office’s open layout, which has allowed her to get to know the “outrageously funny” guy across the aisle. “My ear will seize upon phrases like ‘I don’t even have time to have sex anymore.’ It can be a welcome respite in an otherwise stressful day.”

Write to
Elizabeth Bernstein at Bonds@wsj.com

By BEN LEVISOHN

Many investors, looking for better returns and a little safety, are loading up on corporate bonds, which have been far steadier than stocks during the market storms of the past few years.

But corporate bonds are getting less safe by the day.

A change in the way corporate bonds are traded is resulting in murkier prices, more volatility and less differentiation among individual bonds. The result: Experts say investors should expect more risk and potentially less return from such bonds in the future, and rethink how they assemble their entire bond portfolios.

The good news? Once investors understand how the corporate-bond market is changing, they can make educated decisions about which kinds of investments—mutual funds, exchange-traded funds or individual bonds—make the most sense, given their investing goals.

“The changes will ultimately hurt the small investor,” says Howard Simons, strategist at Bianco Research. “The only thing you can do is be aware of how risk has shifted and act accordingly.”

It is easy to be complacent about an investment when it is surging. A broad rally in Treasury securities is pushing up prices of all manner of other bonds. After a strong 2011, relatively safe corporate bonds rated “investment grade” by the bond-rating firms have returned 1.9% this year—their best annual start since 2001. Riskier high-yield, or “junk,” bonds have returned 4.1%. This, after three decades of steadily rising bond prices—among the longest bull markets for bonds in history.

Since the Federal Reserve’s announcement late last month that it expects to keep interest rates low through 2014, investors have stepped up their buying even more. During the week ended Feb. 1, investors poured $7.5 billion into bond mutual funds, the most since data firm EPFR Global began tracking such investments in 2002.

Most advisers recommend that investors hold a broad mix of Treasurys and corporate bonds. But while the Treasury market continues to be the biggest and deepest investment market in the world, corporate bonds are becoming less predictable, even for the pros.

Banks Step Back

At the heart of the shift is the declining role of banks, which historically have been big corporate bond dealers, keeping vast reserves of bonds on their books and matching buyers and sellers. Experts say new regulations, including the Dodd-Frank Act, the so-called Volcker rule, which bans banks from trading for their own account, and Basel III, which governs banks internationally, have forced banks to be more selective about what they hold.

All told, banks hold about $45 billion in corporate bonds with maturities over one year, versus about $215 billion at the beginning of 2008, according to Barclays Capital.

Mutual funds, exchange-traded funds and other investors are filling the void. Investment-grade and high-yield corporate-bond funds have doubled in size since the beginning of 2008, to $1.2 trillion and almost $250 billion, respectively, according to Barclays. In the $1 trillion high-yield bond market, ETFs now account for about 3% of the market, up from virtually nothing four years ago.

As the steadying influence of banks wanes, the bond market is more vulnerable to swings in investor sentiment, experts say.

Prices today are being driven more by the whims of investors buying and selling funds and ETFs and less by the fundamentals of the bonds themselves, says Mr. Simons of Bianco Research. Investment-grade bonds have seen their volatility nearly triple during the past three years, compared with the three years before the financial crisis, according to Barclays Capital. High-yield bonds are more than twice as volatile.

The result is bigger opportunities for gains when the market goes up—but a bigger chance of losses when the market tanks, says David Sherman, principal at Cohanzick Management and portfolio manager of the RiverPark Short-Term High-Yield fund.

Murkier Prices

Making matters trickier for investors, bond prices are artificially high because of the Fed’s recent rounds of Treasury purchases, which have pushed up the prices of most other bonds as investors seek higher yields. That makes traditional investment gauges less useful.

Consider the debate about whether junk bonds are a good investment now. One way managers value bonds is to look at the difference between their yields and those of Treasurys. When the gap is wider than the historical average, many managers say corporate bonds represent a good value. That seems to be the case now: The “spread” between high-yield corporate bonds and Treasurys is about 6.4 percentage points, above the 15-year average of 6.

Not so fast, others say. Because Treasury rates are artificially low, it is better to use the actual yield of the high-yield bond index, which currently is 7.3%, far below the 15-year average of 10%.

On that basis, the skeptics say, the bond yields aren’t enough to compensate investors for the risks they are taking.

If you aren’t sure you can value a bond, “you don’t want to get involved,” says Stephen Antczak, head of U.S. credit strategy at Citigroup.

Trouble for Funds

The changes in the market are forcing mutual-fund managers to rethink their strategies in ways that could dent returns and increase risk for investors.

Funds are required to allow shareholders to buy new shares or withdraw all of their cash every trading day. But the increased volatility is forcing managers to be more careful with their portfolios.

“Investors pulling out a lot of money in a hurry can upend an investment strategy and force you to sell things you don’t necessarily want to sell,” says Eric Jacobson, director of fixed-income research at Morningstar.

Many managers are choosing to hold more “liquid” bonds, which can be sold at a moment’s notice. Bob Brown, president of the bond group at Fidelity Investments, says the firm now looks only for highly liquid securities. Eaton Vance has reduced the amount of hard-to-sell securities it owns in its portfolios.

The problem is that liquid bonds typically are more volatile than illiquid ones because they trade more frequently. The Barclays Very Liquid High Yield Bond Index is 25% more volatile than the Barclays High-Yield Bond index, which contains a mixture of liquid and less-liquid securities.

The price for liquidity, in other words, is more violent swings.

Some managers are boosting their cash holdings, which can reduce returns, so that they will have enough money on hand to meet redemptions quickly if the market drops and investors start selling. The Eaton Vance Income Fund of Boston, for example, now holds about 5% to 6% of its portfolio in cash, versus 2% before the financial crisis.

“Do you hold more cash, more liquid bonds or some balance of those two?” asks Jeff Meli, a strategist at Barclays Capital.

Playing the Market

So what is an individual investor to do?

Experts say people who can afford to do so should stick with individual bonds. Typically corporate bonds have a face value of $1,000, but investors should plan on buying blocks of at least $20,000 to avoid getting hit hard by commissions. Advisers generally recommend investors buy bonds from at least 20 different issuers, for diversification.

Since most investors buy bonds for income and plan to hold them to maturity, they don’t have to worry as much about the market’s volatility or increased correlation. They also can buy cheaper illiquid bonds that fund managers avoid.

There are downsides, however. Institutions tend to get better prices for big blocks of bonds than small investors can get for smaller blocks. Investors should check the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine website, known as Trace, to find recent prices. And these days, getting your hands on bonds with decent yields isn’t easy, because investors are holding on to them rather than selling them for profit, says Marilyn Cohen, president of Envision Capital Management in Los Angeles.

Experts suggest investors look for companies with good cash flows and improving profitability. Ms. Cohen recommends three that she says fit the bill: a high-yield bond issued by auto-parts maker American Axle that matures in 2017 and has a 6.33% yield. She also likes a high-yield issue by energy-company Chesapeake Energy maturing in 2020 with a 6.38% yield, and an investment-grade bond from auto-parts maker BorgWarner that matures in 2020 and yields 3.51%. (Investment-grade bonds carry ratings of triple-B or higher from Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings and Baa or higher from Moody’s; high-yield bonds have lower ratings.)

Fund Choices

Many investors can’t afford individual bonds or don’t have access to them in 401(k) accounts. For them, funds and ETFs are the only alternative.

They, like professional fund managers, must decide whether to look for more liquidity or less, and more cash or less.

Such investors should think about what they are trying to achieve with their bond holdings. For instance, an investor who wants exposure to the entire asset class should choose a fund or ETF with a low expense ratio and little cash, says Warren Ward of financial-advisory firm Warren Ward Associates.

“We choose from the lowest-cost funds available,” he says. “And we prefer to make the cash decision ourselves.”

Michael Gibney, an adviser at Highland Financial Advisors in Riverdale, N.J., recommends holding a large fund like the $16.2 billion Vanguard Intermediate-Term Investment Grade fund, a portfolio of 1,218 bonds that carries an expense ratio of 0.22%.

Sarah Bush, a senior fund analyst at Morningstar, suggests the $15.6 billion Vanguard High-Yield Corporate fund, which has an expense ratio of 0.25% and has just 1.6% in cash.

Other options include the $18.7 billion iBoxx Investment-Grade Corporate Bond ETF, which has an expense ratio of 0.15%, and the $13.4 billion iShares iBoxx High-Yield Corporate Bond ETF, which charges 0.5% in fees.

Sam Katzman, chief investment officer at Constellation Wealth Advisors in New York, prefers “go-anywhere” funds that have wider latitude in the types of bonds they buy and the amount of cash they hold. Such funds are for investors who prefer their manager make decisions about whether they think the bond market looks rich or cheap and act accordingly.

Mr. Katzman likes the $60 billion Templeton Global Bond fund, which owns international bonds and currencies as well as U.S. corporate bonds, and has an expense ratio of 0.88%.

Not everyone thinks cash is bad. Gregory Lavine, an adviser at Altfest Personal Wealth Management in New York, says he isn’t concerned by managers holding some when better opportunities are unavailable. One of his choices: the Loomis Sayles Bond fund, which has about 11% in cash and an expense ratio of 0.63%.

Cash doesn’t have to subtract too much from performance. The ING Pimco High-Yield Portfolio has an 8.7% cash stake, well above the category average of 5.9%, yet has been in the top 25% of high yield funds during the past one and three years, according to Morningstar.

Says Mr. Lavine: “It’s better to hold cash than invest poorly.”

By DENNIS NISHI

If you’ve been laid off and your former employer is hiring again, you might see the news as a chance to get back to work at your old firm. But first it’s important to consider whether it’s a good idea—and whether the skills you bring are what the company needs now.

The odds of getting an old job back are good if you were let go simply for budgetary reasons and the company outlook has been improving.

But before you get too excited about trying to return, do a self-assessment—and be honest. “Sometimes there is some selectivity in who is laid off,” says Jerald Jellison, a professor of social psychology at the University of Southern California who specializes in the workplace. He recommends asking yourself whether you created any bad feelings when you left or while you were working at the company. Was your work up to par? Was your role valued in better economic times?

You also should consider whether or not you feel a renewed commitment to the work you’d be doing, says Mr. Jellison. “I liken it to returning to an old flame. Is it really a good idea? Do you really want to be there?”

What the Company Needs

Next, consider what the company will need as conditions improve. If you were a marketing manager, figure out how you could return with a new angle of attack that could help make the company more competitive. If you’ve enrolled in any courses or have time to sign up for a webinar that will bump up your skills, highlight these efforts in a cover letter.

Keep in mind that even if your old firm is starting to rebuild and your position—something like it—is resurrected, you might not get the job. Approach the application process and interview as if you were a new candidate. Fine-tune your résumé, do research that shows you haven’t fallen behind on what the company has been doing, prepare for the interview and be ready to answer tough questions.

And before you apply, contact former co-workers who have kept their jobs to assess how things are now relative to when you were there. Get up to speed on any other news that can help you understand key personnel changes or staffing needs, says Ruth K. Liebermann, managing director of HR Insourcing in Boston. “Contact your former boss and let him [or her] know that you’re interested,” says Ms. Liebermann. “Tell your boss what new initiatives you plan to bring, with the benefit of hindsight, and what new energy you have coming back.”

No Grudges

When you contact your former boss or human-resources department, assure them that you harbor no bad feelings about being laid off and are eager to return to work. If you’re trying to persuade a new boss to bring you back, focus on your accomplishments and get references to back up your claims.

If there are no full-time positions available, consider asking to work on a contract basis. The pay is often higher and, though there are no benefits, the job may eventually transition into a full-time position.

Don’t be discouraged if you get through the interview process and find out the job now pays less than you earned before. “You have to consider the market conditions,” says Paul Glen, a management consultant in Los Angeles. “Everybody is taking pay cuts and losing benefits. That will change as the economy improves.”

Write to Dennis Nishi at cjeditor@dowjones.com

Por MATTHEW DALTON y STEPHEN FIDLER

BRUSELAS— Se espera que el Fondo Monetario Internacional contribuya sólo con 13.000 millones de euros al segundo paquete de ayuda de Grecia, valorado en 130.000 millones de euros, lo que hará que los gobiernos de la eurozona tengan que aportar una proporción de fondos mucho mayor que en los tres rescates anteriores a otros países europeos, dijeron fuentes cercanas a la situación.

La menor contribución del FMI refleja los temores de los miembros del fondo por un exceso de exposición a la eurozona, según las fuentes. El fondo ya ha acordado prestar 30.000 millones de euros a Grecia, 22.500 millones de euros a Irlanda y 26.000 millones de euros a Portugal, cantidades todas ellas varias veces mayor que la cuota de esos tres países al FMI.

Las fuentes dijeron que el tamaño de la contribución del FMI no se ha definido. Será un asunto de discusión de los funcionarios de la eurozona el domingo y de los ministros de Finanzas el lunes, con el fin de alcanzar un acuerdo sobre el segundo rescate para Grecia después de meses de negociaciones. Se prevé que los funcionarios del FMI asistan el lunes a la reunión de ministros de Finanzas de la eurozona en Bruselas.

El FMI contribuyó con 27% del primer plan de rescate de Grecia, de 110.000 millones de euros. Sin embargo, después de que los líderes de la eurozona acordaran en julio entregar a Grecia un segundo rescate, los funcionarios del FMI dijeron que la contribución del fondo sería significativamente menor a un tercio.