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| BondsOnline.com: instant access to and extensive coverage of over 3.5 million stocks, bonds, indexes and other securities covering major and emerging markets and exchanges across the globe. |
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| Bonds Online |
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| 5/10/2013Market Performance |
| Municipal Bonds |
|---|
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S&P National Bond Index
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3.00% |
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S&P California Bond Index
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2.96% |
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S&P New York Bond Index
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3.13% |
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S&P National 0-5 Year Municipal Bond Index
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0.70% |
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| S&P/BGCantor US Treasury Bond |
400.09 |
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| More |
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| Income Equities: |
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| Preferred Stocks |
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S&P U.S. Preferred Stock Index
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848.03 |
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S&P U.S. Preferred Stock Index (CAD)
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636.26 |
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S&P U.S. Preferred Stock Index (TR)
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1,701.05 |
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S&P U.S. Preferred Stock Index (TR) (CAD)
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1,276.26 |
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| REITs |
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S&P REIT Index
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174.07 |
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S&P REIT Index (TR)
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425.30 |
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| MLPs |
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S&P MLP Index
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2,469.58 |
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S&P MLP Index (TR)
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5,428.50 |
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See Data
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Bond Investors to be Protected by New Niche Funds? |
Financial Feed - May 21, 2011 - By Sonia Nikai
Retirement investors face a dilemma after knowing that bonds may be in for a long, slow and damaging decline on the expiration of the Federal Reserve’s easy money policies and with interest rates going up. They were advised to maintain some investment in the bond market to be diversified carefully. They may want to position those fixed-income assets without crashing when the expected bond bear hits.
Few ideas were suggested and there were offers that say investors will be able to economize on respectable returns without the dangers of price declines. The new products run the extremes of variety of management. Some free bond funds allow managers to buy and want whenever while there are ETFs that limit managers to a slim band of bonds until reaching maturity. In any of the two, it seems that the new funds will give better income compared with the almost non-existent yields existing in very short-term securities. Although these can help them during share price, declines may hit in case of increased rates.
Pimco created the free bonds in 2008 and from then on the Pimco Unconstrained Bond Fund (PUBAX) has involved more than $17-billion in assets. Competitors like Harbor Unconstrained Bond Fund (HAUBX), the JPMorgan Strategic Income Opportunities (JSOAX) and the AllianceBernstein Unconstrained Bond Fund (AGCCX) have joined in. An assumption in these funds is that expert managers can produce stable returns higher than the short-term bond index. These funds’ managers can buy corporate bonds, sovereign debt of emerging market countries, or high yield debt.
The majority of these funds have not proven performance records. Some that are a year old have averaged 3.76% in the 12 months ending May 18. iShares Barclays Aggregate Bond Fund, on the other hand, gained 4.88% in the same period. It is said that these funds’ flexibility will pay off in raised rates and when they do, managers can manage to avoid falling prices which a broad bond index fund can’t do.
These funds are expensive and with a median expense ratio higher than 1%, the funds have to earn more than cheaper and more constrained short-term funds in the long run. But bond funds’ holdings frequently turn over and don’t mature the way individual bonds do. Increased rates mean dropped prices and investors may not really gain. Individual bond prices can also dip but if investors waited until bonds’ maturity, their face value investment is returned. However, money and time have to be invested to collect and manage a safely diversified portfolio of corporate bonds.
For the complete article.
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| Stuff to look at |
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| BondsOnline Advisor |
Income Security Recommendation January 2013 Issue.
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