Why do you still own Bond Funds? hank: "I hope that better quality, longer duration bonds continue to suck air. Because if they begin to perform well in a meaningful way it means that other, riskier, markets (including junk bonds) are in a heap of trouble."
Depends on what kind of investor you are. Equity oriented investors, tend to only think of bonds as "ballast" instruments, focusing on treasuries and investment grade options. Bond oriented investors, are aware that there are a wide variety of bond oefs, that perform differently in different environments. Funds like PIMIX and DBLTX were birthed in the ashes of the 2008 crash, purchased nonagency mortgages that were out of favor, and over the following decade of equity bull market performance, those junky bond oefs became hugely popular, replacing CDs for income flow, and making great total return, without the volatility of equities.
I am not a great trader, but I have found that bond oefs move slowly enough that I can establish sell points for bond oefs, and easily switch to other bond oefs, in other categories, and still make a nice, lower stress, total return result. I did that in March 2020, when I sold my junkier bond oefs (with a small loss after hitting my sell point criteria), replaced them with some safe harbor bond oefs like GIBLX and BIMIX, and then when those junky bond oefs were once again performing well, I was able to switch back into funds like DHEAX and SEMMX, and make a nice total return. I am beyond my youthful days of heavy equity oriented investing, but have found my bond oef stage in retirement, provides a very nice total return result, allowing me to preserve what I have accumulated, and still grow the principal each year, even with the required RMD harvesting.
I am 73 years old, in retirement, with no company pensions to provide me a safety net. My preservation of principal objectives, with modest total return, fits my current investing objectives and needs. I am quite content making 4% to 6% annual total return, with minimal volatility and stress, using bond oefs.
MUTUAL FUNDS WHY? I’m very interested in more discussion on the advantages of ETF’s vs MF and not just in taxable accounts but in retirement accounts + in retirement accounts where the investor has no interest in being an active trader.
Ben Johnson, director of global ETF research for M*, wrote a recent article discussing the benefits and drawbacks of active ETFs.
Link
MUTUAL FUNDS WHY? I’m very interested in more discussion on the advantages of ETF’s vs MF and not just in taxable accounts but in retirement accounts + in retirement accounts where the investor has no interest in being an active trader. Perhaps that deserves its own thread? Or is this what was intended here? Fido has a limited number of etf to choose from plus some iShare options. Their offering seems very limited to me. Fido that is.
De-accumulation phase
RiverPark Short Term High Yield Fund to close to new investors through financial intermediaries I am thinking of utilizing RPHYX for some cash in a taxable brokerage account. I used this fund in retirement account so I did not care much about tax efficiency and cost base accounting. But in a taxable account one needs to be more careful not to be surprised.
Any tips on using RPHYX in a taxable account?
MUTUAL FUNDS WHY? I think Mutual Funds will continue to be the main mechanism in retirement accounts where once a day trade is just enough. ETFs will be increasingly dominant in taxable accounts. Not all ETFs are now cost and some hide the acquired funds' underlying ER and ETFs in low liquidity assets tend to diverge from underlying asset values. So, they many reasons to continue to invest through mutual funds.
Holding non-Vanguard funds at Vanguard or Schwab Aside from Vanguard funds, there are funds from other fund families where Vanguard sells a cheaper share class than you can get at Fidelity/Schwab/TDA. For example, Columbia Thermostat is easy to buy anywhere, but Vanguard sells the cheaper COTZX class I shares. They're even NTF with a low ($2K/$3K) min.
(About 1/3 of the funds returned from a M* search I ran were Columbia funds, so if you care about getting a cheaper share class of Vanguard
or Columbia funds, you might want to seriously consider VBS.)
Then there are other funds that Vanguard sells but retail investors can't get (any share class) at the other brokerages. For example, GEQIX and TSYNX/TSYIX
M* lists of brokers:
COTZX:
http://financials.morningstar.com/fund/purchase-info.html?t=COTZXGEQIX:
http://financials.morningstar.com/fund/purchase-info.html?t=GEQIXTSYNX:
http://financials.morningstar.com/fund/purchase-info.html?t=TSYNXTSYIX:
http://financials.morningstar.com/fund/purchase-info.html?t=TSYIXM*'s brokerage data is not the most reliable part of its database, so I checked each of the sample funds above.
I ran the following screen on M*. It returned 258 share classes, at least some of which were wrong (e.g. CGM funds are no longer available at Vanguard. The screen returned all
three surviving CGM funds.)
(Brokerage Availability = Vanguard TF
or Brokerage Availability = Vanguard NTF)
and (Brokerage Availability not = Schwab All (Retail, Instl,
Retirement))
and (Brokerage Availability not = Schwab OneSource & NTF (No Load & No Transaction Fee))
and (Brokerage Availability not = Fidelity Retail FundsNetwork)
and (Brokerage Availability not = Fidelity Retail FundsNetwork-NTF)
and (Minimum Initial Purchase <= 50000)
Why do you still own Bond Funds? @Crash, yes and no. Someone can do pretty well with minimal changes. I held PIMIX about 7-8 years. I held one HY Muni for 3 years. In the last several years I invested mostly in HY Munis + special securitized bond within Multi/NonTrad.
So, I babysit it because I love it and it works pretty well but someone can make 1-2 changes annually and still do well. Many have no problem trading stocks/ETF/CEFs many times annually but somehow it can't be done with bonds or believe that bonds have only one category.
Bonds are the true simple mainstream ballast to stocks and when you go deeper into several bond categories you will find they can do even more and have different correlation too.
Sure, I used to be many years in stock funds at 85-100% but as I got older and especially in
retirement I learned a lot more about bonds.
Why do you still own Bond Funds? @FD1000. Rookies do need to learn the ins and outs. And even some folks who have learned quite a bit about how this all happens and about all the different menu items, so to speak, just don't care to babysit their stuff all the time. For me, it's my hobby in
retirement. A nice problem to have.
Single Life Annuity Alternative: The Tontine? Despite the fact that one research paper recently found Americans are more afraid of outliving their money during retirement than death itself, and economics research has long since shown that leveraging mortality credits through annuitization is an “efficient” way to buy retirement income that can’t be outlived, the adoption of guaranteed lifetime income vehicles like a single premium immediate annuity purchased at retirement remains extremely low.
In a recent new book entitled “King William’s Tontine: Why The Retirement Annuity Of The Future Should Resemble Its Past”, retirement researcher Moshe Milevsky makes the case that perhaps the primary blocking point of immediate annuitization really is its cost, and that guaranteeing mortality credits takes an unnecessary toll on available retirement income payouts (not to mention creating systemic risk for insurance companies if there’s a medical breakthrough!).
As an alternative, Milevsky advocates for an alternative retirement income vehicle, called a tontine.
kitces.com/blog/tontine-agreement-instead-of-annuity-lifetime-income-mortality-credits
Why do you still own Bond Funds? I don;'t own PONAX or PIMIX but I do own their CEF counter partners PCI, PDI and PTY. Why do I still own them? Because on the first of each month they politely drop $1K+ of distributions into my retirement account. To carry my lunacy even further I also hold IOFIX. Equities at current levels aren't compelling enough to me to make any switches.
De-accumulation phase Great tread on retirement withdrawal. Where does target date funds fit into the strategies discussed here?