What happened to all the buy and hold bond investors? See table below. The latest long term fund data from ICI shows bond investors are doing what most investors do. Flee an investment at the first signs of distress. Taxable bonds lost about 4% of assets in June and Read more…
The recent “taper-tantrum” over the Fed’s potential coming removal of quantitative easing has caused quite some unrest in the bond market. This has caused interest rates, in particular longer term rates (10yrs +) to move substantially higher across the board. Long term munis were no exception and the sell off Read more…
Do you know why you own bonds in your portfolio? There are many reasons to own bonds but one of the biggest reasons historically is no longer a good one for many investors. Bonds are often held in portfolios to provide a safe and steady source of income, in particular Read more…
I’m not one of those bond bubble guys, mainly because I see eerie parallels between the Japanese experience and what the US is currently going through, but there is some crazy stuff going on in bond land. Late last week Microsoft (MSFT) sold 5 yr bonds at a yield of Read more…
The fiscal cliff is coming and the politicians are going to let us drive right over it. At least that’s the drumbeat you hear in the financial news media. And with 5 months to go until the end of 2012 the drumbeat is picking up its tempo. With that in Read more…
OK. I know. I’m schizophrenic. In my last post I’m telling you why I think interest rates will stay low longer than people expect. Now, I’m going to explain how rates could go higher and why I’m hoping they do. One of the things that makes investing a challenge is Read more…
How many times a week do you read that interest rates have no where to go but up? That bonds are terrible investments and will be crushed by rising rates? And when was the first time you started to hear these stories? If you read pretty much any source of Read more…
I am often shocked at how much income investors will stick their neck out for yield. I spend most of my time looking at stocks so I often will note how I think investors are reaching for yield by going after utilities, REITs, etc… But if you really want to Read more…
Here we go again. Just as we hit the one year anniversary of Meredith Whitney’s famous, or more accurately infamous, muni bond call a new muni bond scare has surfaced. This time its the potential change to municipal bond’s tax status. Lets take a look at this latest fear and Read more…
It’s time again for the monthly update of the income investor dashboard. July was an exciting month with stocks dropping in general, bonds defying the consensus chorus and rallying, and volatility spiking higher. Below is the updated income investor dashboard. As usual the highlighted green cells are for those areas Read more…
Now that the first half of 2011 is over I wanted to step back and look at the performance of the sectors in the income investor dashboard. Lets look at the YTD performance of the dashboard and see if it offers any insights. Below are the 1H 2011 total returns Read more…