BlackRock
Long Duration Bond Portfolio is changing its name on July 29, 2013, to BlackRock Investment Grade Bond Portfolio.
Of course, if you own
a longer duration bond portfolio these numbers will not look nearly as friendly.
Not exact matches
According to Morningstar Direct, $ 59 billion is invested in
long - term
bond funds and exchange - traded funds (defined as
portfolios with average
durations above six years).
The
longer the
duration, the more sensitive a
bond portfolio is to interest rate changes, so HYGH's much shorter
duration is its protection against higher rates.
Given those
durations, an investor with 15 - 20 years to invest could literally plow their entire
portfolio into stocks and
long - term
bonds, in expectation of very high
long - term returns, with the additional comfort that their financial security did not rely on the direction of the markets, thanks to the ability to reinvest generous coupon payments and dividends.
This could be a drag on current growth and cause risk - on / risk - off gyrations, making
long -
duration bonds useful
portfolio diversifiers.
Specifically,
longer -
duration bonds are reasserting their role as an effective ballast to equity risk and can be especially helpful in equity - centric
portfolios.
Over the
long term the nominal return on a
duration - managed
bond portfolio (or
bond index — the
duration on those doesn't change very much) converges on the starting yield.
While
longer -
duration bonds can provide
portfolio diversification benefits, shortening the
duration of your
bond portfolio can potentially help manage losses due to rising interest rates.
Former Fed Governor Stein highlighted that Federal Reserve's monetary policy transmission mechanism works through the «recruitment channel,» in such way that investors are «enlisted» to achieve central bank objectives by taking higher credit risks, or to rebalance
portfolio by buying
longer - term
bonds (thus taking on higher
duration risk) to seek higher yield when faced with diminished returns from safe assets.
Shorter ‐
duration bonds do not provide the same degree of
portfolio diversification as
longer ‐
duration bonds.
With stocks on shaky ground, investors with equity - centric
portfolios may want to consider adding exposure to
longer -
duration bonds.
High Quality,
Long Duration Bonds Perform Well When Times Get Tough Can we improve upon this
portfolio construction?
A
long duration fund should be composed of a diversified
portfolio of investment grade
bonds and have a
long duration.
So if an investor expects market interest rates to go down, they want a
long -
duration bond portfolio because it will maximize the increase in price.
The
longer the
duration or maturity of the
bonds in the
portfolio, the more committed the managers are to those
bonds.
Other specialty
portfolios include Short Term and Floating Rate
Bonds, Inflation - Linked
Bonds, Bank Loans, Infrastructure Debt, and
Long Duration Credit.
Fairly conservative investors favor short - term
bond funds because they're less sensitive to interest rates than
portfolios with
longer durations.
Specifically,
longer -
duration bonds are reasserting their role as an effective ballast to equity risk and can be especially helpful in equity - centric
portfolios.
High - yield corporate
bonds may also be used to gain modest exposure to higher - yielding maturities, though the
portfolio is unlikely to hold a large percentage of high - yield
bonds, especially those of
longer duration.
A good
bond manager has already decreased the
portfolio duration (selling
long term
bonds to buy more short term
bonds) to make sure that the
bond fund doesn't drop drastically.
But 10 years is a
long time for a
bond portfolio with a
duration of less than 2 years.
The Vanguard STAR fund benchmark was also up 1.4 % in November matching our Aggressive
portfolio exactly, however, in down markets we're generally falling less than this total
portfolio fund, mostly because of our short positions and
longer -
duration bond holdings.
He currently serves as the lead
portfolio manager for
Long Duration strategies, specializing in corporate and government
bonds.
A risk of DIAs present in a
portfolio of
longer -
duration bonds is the possibility that rising interest rates and inflation will erode the purchasing power of future income payments.