The Virtues Of Bond Laddering

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The Virtues Of Bond Laddering

August 23, 2016

by Larry Swedroe

Bond ladders are frequently criticized in the financial media and even among some professional advisors (who are often able to use only bond mutual funds or ETFs). But there are many advantages of owning them.

  • They avoid mutual fund expenses.

An important benefit of owning individual bonds is that they avoid the fees investors have to pay a fund manager.

  • They offer complete control over credit and term risk.
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Perhaps the most important benefit of owning individual bond securities is that advisors take 100% control over the credit risk and term risk of their portfolios. They also take control over the timing of cash flows into and out of such a portfolio. This is particularly important to clients relying on their fixed-income assets to provide the cash flow they need to maintain their desired lifestyle (in retirement or otherwise).

Bond Laddering

A related issue is that municipal bond funds (and corporate bond funds) typically own bonds with call risk. Those bonds carry slightly higher yields to compensate investors for taking this risk.

However, not only does that feature cause advisors to lose control over the maturity of their bonds, the reinvestment risk that calls create can show up at the wrong time, when stocks are doing poorly. The issuer will call in the bond, and advisors have to reinvest the proceeds at lower rates. If you are going to consider buying a bond with a call feature, require that it have at least 80% protection (meaning a bond with 10 years to maturity has at least eight years of call protection).

  • They avoid the impact of hot fund flows.

There’s another little-discussed benefit of owning individual securities. With a mutual fund (or ETF), after a period of falling interest rates, “hot money” chasing recent performance will typically buy into the fund. The fund, therefore, must buy more bonds in a low-rate environment, thus lowering the average rate for all investors. Then, if rates begin to rise, the hot money will often leave, forcing the fund (and long-term investors in it) to suffer trading costs and capital losses that can’t be “waited out.”

On the other hand, an investor who holds individual bonds and is satisfied with the yield to maturity when the bond was purchased, is not subject to the same problem (that is, other investors cannot force him to sell at depressed prices).

  • They offer the ability to harvest losses at the individual security level.

Another advantage of owning individual municipal bonds is that, in a rising-rate environment, investors have the ability to tax manage (harvest losses) at the individual security level rather than just the fund level.

This option is a greater benefit with municipal bonds than it is with stocks. With stocks, when you harvest a loss, you reset the basis and eventually (unless you receive a stepped-up basis upon death) will have to pay a tax on the now-larger gain. Thus, your benefit is the time value of money. With municipal bonds, when you suffer a loss and buy a similar bond at a now-higher interest rate, you get the full value of the tax benefit because the higher interest rate you now earn is tax-free.

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