Bond funds continue to challenge investors seeking less risk from the stock market, but also retaining buying power. My favorite writer Jason Zweig also wrote about this recently, along with many of his readers’ opinions. In this post, we illustrate what’s been happening over the last year since we last wrote about bond ETFs.
Bond funds and their time to maturity
Bond fund performance over the last year appears to still be heavily dependent on their time to maturity. As the image below shows, the total return of the shortest-term U.S. treasury bill ETF (ticker: BIL) was gradual and positive. The intermediate-term bond fund (ticker: AGG) nearly broke even for the last 12 months. The long-term bond fund (ticker: TLT) was most sensitive to rising interest rates and had the largest loss and most volatility over the past 12 months.
Bond ETFs with shorter terms to maturity
Staying with shorter-term ETFs has become much easier with several options for investors to consider. Here is a short list to consider:
- SPDR Bloomberg 1-3 Month T-Bill ETF (ticker: BIL)
- iShares Short Treasury Bond ETF (ticker: SHV)
- Goldman Sachs Access Treasury 0-1 Year ETF (ticker: GBIL)
- iShares 0-3 Month Treasury Bond ETF (ticker: SGOV)
Referring to the image above, we see that the SPDR Bloomberg 1-3 Month T-bill ETF returned 5.3%. And, as we have written about previously, this return is exempt from state taxes. This exemption is significant for states like California and Hawaii, but irrelevant for states like Texas and Florida that have no state income tax. In any case, with current inflation around 3%, these short-term investments are helping ETF investors to maintain and slightly grow their buying power.
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