Lately, the bond market has been incredibly competitive, which is no surprise given how people tend to gravitate to bonds during poor economic times and/or periods of high volatility. For many investors, the issue of person vs. bond funds is one that keeps them up at night. Where is the investor ‘s attention on the bond market? To help you manage the bond market, you need to learn more about individual bonds and bond funds:
-Individual bonds offer a stable source of income for creditors (i.e. investors usually receive interest on such bonds twice a year) as well as guarantees that the original investment (i.e. principal) will be returned after the bond has matured. However, individual bonds may be sold before maturity by the borrower.
-Investors are supposed to treat bond funds like stock markets. Bond funds are usually bought by a group of people pooling their savings, then handed over to a broker. While individual bonds are paid twice a year, bond funds usually pay on a monthly basis. This payment fluctuates more than an individual bond.
Since interest rates are as small as they are at present, bringing capital into the bond fund is very risky for an investor, because if they want to get their money back, they will have to sell it out of the bond fund, which will be much lower when interest rates begin to rise. When the rate changes, the investor continues to earn the original return on which he or she bought the bond and can reinvest the principal at the current rate when the bond matures.
— -It is often essential to ask the broker when buying a bond fund, what is the issuer of the underlying securities, what is the profit for those securities, and what is the underlying securities rating. Thus, the investor is fully aware of what they are putting their hard-earned money into. The investor also needs to ask what fees are associated with the bond fund, as most of the funds have a lot of fees to pay for the investor’s benefit. Bond funds are highly lucrative for brokers or salesmen.
