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NYT on Bond Funds Crisis: Nothing to see here

edited April 2020 in Fund Discussions
If you read this, it sounds like the crisis in the bond market was just a blip and now that the Fed’s stepped in everything’s hunky dory: https://google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/business/bonds-fed-rescue-investors.amp.html

Now read this to understand how problematic bond funds can be and have been recently: https://google.com/amp/s/finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/bond-etfs-not-mispricing-mutual-120000952.html

Comments

  • beebee
    edited April 2020
    This Wealthtrack interview does a good job of further discussing and explaining your second link's topic and discusses the evolution of "Direct Indexing" and Crypto-currency".


  • edited April 2020
    Thanks bee. Always been impressed with Matt Hougan.
  • Thanks for all of the links above.

    In 2008, I was primarily in equity stocks. I just stopped looking at the market. And given some time, did fine. Stocks did what they were going to do.

    Fast forward to now, in February/early March, having 50% of my retirement portfolio allocated to bonds, I switched from what I thought were riskier bond positions (riskier being credit/liquidity-wise) to more core-like ETFs, but was quite surprised to see how even core bond ETFs ended up being so volatile. There is something different in reading about the risks in a prospectus vs experiencing them. Lesson hopefully learnt.

    The yahoo finance link on ETF bond pricing made clearer what I vaguely knew though was still disconcerting. But for a long term holder of these ETFs or mutual funds, does it actually matter? The interview with Matt Hougan, I thought suggested not, though he certainly seems to favor ETFs over mutual funds because of the price discounts when redemptions are involved.

    With said volatility, it will be interesting to look back & see actual investor returns vs fund performance for bond funds. I suspect it will be more stock-like going forward.

    How much does the ability to trade (individual investors &/or institutions ) bond ETFs throughout the day add to the volatility of pricing? Core mutual fund bond funds seemed to do better until the bailout occurred.





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