Bond mutual funds invest in
portfolios of individual bonds, while stock funds invest in individual companies and group them together into a basket of securities.
One reason is that large institutional investors are increasingly using ETFs
instead of individual bonds, and a recent survey gives us comfort that further adoption will persist.
We should be very clear that a bond fund is just a collection
of individual bonds in which the manager acts as your buyer / seller.
A portfolio comprised primarily
of individual bonds offers more transparency of security holdings than shares of bond mutual funds which are only required to publish actual bond holdings at quarter - end.
So, as we look at household ownership
of individual bonds as a percentage of total financial assets, we see the following.
A bond allocation comprised
primarily of individual bonds provides much more flexibility as it relates to duration management and tax efficiency.
This is designed to offer investors the best of both worlds: The diversification benefit of a traditional bond mutual fund and the declining interest rate risk
sensitivity of an individual bond.
Similar to a stock mutual fund, a bond fund offers excellent diversification since there are hundreds or even
thousands of individuals bonds included in the fund.
Investors can achieve fixed income securities diversification far more economically than they could through the direct
purchase of individual bonds.
A bond ETF could contain hundreds — sometimes thousands — of bonds, making an ETF generally less risky than owning just a
handful of individual bonds.
We've created a new tab in the Fixed Income Analysis tool that can help you estimate the hypothetical impact of interest rate changes on the
value of individual bonds and bond funds.
This is because bond funds invest in a
variety of individual bonds, which are collectively designed to provide potential income continuity to the fund.
We build diversified bond fund portfolios, which represent
thousands of individual bonds, and avoid getting too concentrated in certain kinds of bonds.
In this article Hylland Capital's investment advisor, Matt Hylland, talks about a relatively new product available for savers that combines the low cost and diversification with today's ETFs and the defined maturity
benefits of individual bonds.
Defined - maturity bond ETFs, such as iShares iBonds, can help build efficient bond ladders by combining the reinvestment control
of individual bonds with the convenience of an ETF.
Effective Duration - This statistic provides a measure of the sensitivity of the Fund's price to changes in interest rate changes and is calculated as the weighted
average of the individual bond durations.
For example, if you own 10 of the same issue of Intel bond, then multiply the current market price and maturity value
of the individual bonds by ten, and input those figures.
While these types of bonds generally represent higher risk than those from developed nations, the risk profile of each fund will vary according to the credit
quality of the individual bonds held by that fund.
The tax
implications of individual bonds are fairly straightforward: If an investor owns bonds that generate taxable income (which covers almost all bonds except for municipal bonds, in general), he or she is taxed on that income in the year it's received.
Bond funds typically own a
number of individual bonds of varying maturities, so the impact of any single bond's performance is lessened if that issuer should fail to pay interest or principal.
In all, the fund provides a viable means to access a diverse pool of US investment grade bonds while mimicking the life
cycle of an individual bond.
If there is any chance a
holder of individual bonds may need to sell their bonds and «cash out», interest rate risk could become a real problem (conversely, bonds» market prices would increase if the prevailing interest rate were to drop, as it did from 2001 through 2003.
Institutional investors are seeking shorter durations in anticipation of rising rates, and as they do so they are moving assets
out of individual bond positions and into ETFs.
It's worth noting that different types
of individual bonds like Treasury, municipal, and corporate, require varying minimum investments.
ETF's and cheap bond funds are excellent opportunities for investors to invest in fixed income, gain diversification and take the time they need to study the more sophisticated
elements of individual bond purchases and ownership.
Since the ETFs trade like equities, an investor (particularly smaller advisors, institutions and firms) do not need to deal with the
headaches of individual bond trading.
There are some other technical hazards, but even if tax reform manages to simplify the system, it's likely that the judging and
pricing of individual bonds will become more complex and unpredictable.
This portfolio is comprised
of individual bonds where each bond or series of bonds features strategically staggered maturity dates at regular intervals.
To counteract potential losses, Robinson encourages clients to replace medium - and long - term bond funds with short - to intermediate - term bond funds, laddered
portfolios of individual bonds, or CDs.