The next level of sophistication involves the creation of
a municipal bond ladder.
SPDJI:
Municipal bond laddering is a classic approach some advisors use to manage interest rate risk and reinvestment risk.
Not exact matches
Ladders should be built only with high - quality
bonds but — in
municipals, especially — you never know when a snake is hidden in the underbrush.
A
bond ladder involves buying a series of individual securities (typically treasury
bonds,
municipal bonds, investment grade corporate
bonds or even CD's) across a variety of maturity dates.
The educational paper, «
Laddering a Portfolio of
Municipal Bonds,» is a detailed piece that covers the construction and benefits of this kind of strategy.
Let's say an investor was considering three options: creating a five - year
ladder, creating a seven - year
ladder, or investing in a short - term
municipal bond fund.
Performance Comparison How has building a
bond ladder compared to investing in a short - term
municipal bond strategy?
The performance of these
ladder portfolios can be compared to the S&P Short - Term National AMT - Free
Municipal Bond Index, which holds
bonds from 0 - 5 years to maturity and rebalances monthly.
A short - term
municipal bond strategy has provided a similar risk and return experience to the
ladder options, and might be appropriate if the investor does not want to manage the maintenance of a
ladder, or does not need the option of withdrawing proceeds from the investment on a regular basis.
Our
Laddered Investing Interest Rate Scenario Tool helps you create sample laddered municipal and corporate bond portfolios and explore how they would perform in different rising rate envir
Laddered Investing Interest Rate Scenario Tool helps you create sample
laddered municipal and corporate bond portfolios and explore how they would perform in different rising rate envir
laddered municipal and corporate
bond portfolios and explore how they would perform in different rising rate environments.
Eaton Vance Corp is to launch two additional NextShares exchange - traded managed funds, the Eaton Vance Global Income Builder NextShares -LRB-: EVGBC) and Eaton Vance TABS 5 - to - 15 Year
Laddered Municipal Bond NextShares (EVLMC).
In these
bond ladder ETFs, all of the underlying investments are concentrated in a selected maturity window (e.g., 2018 investment grade corporates or 2017
municipals).
Individual
municipal bonds may be employed for certain rungs of the
ladder, with target maturity ETFs positioned in the remaining rungs.
Tom: The introduction of target maturity
municipal bond ETFs means that investment advisors that prefer to use
ladders as a way of managing interest rate risk may continue to do so.
Flexibility is required to assemble your own
ladder of
municipal bonds.
Our
laddered portfolios seek to diversify sector and issuer exposure and are constructed using high quality
municipal bonds whose maturities are staggered from one to six, 12 or 18 years — ranges chosen specifically in an effort to add value.
Lord Abbett's new Muni -
Ladder Interest Rate Scenario Tool enables you to create sample
laddered municipal bond portfolios and see how they would perform in different rising - interest - rate environments.