13 and 17 week T-bills are both paying about 5 1/8 - if you have a bunch of money and every 1/8 matters.
Buy from Treasury direct - no worry about default.
Buy from Treasury direct - no worry about default.
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- Thread starter Warstud
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Pretty much all brokerage accounts do that. I mean mine do. But I purposely want the 5% or more on cash that I have no intention of trading or longer term investing.
Oh yeah - forgot to mention - generally no state income tax on them either - only federal tax. Check your own tax situation - I am not a tax accountant or fiduciary.
Yep, lots of places to buy treasuries.
BTW - you know the story of MF global I presume. 1.6B$ loss - which also wasn't supposed to be possible. I think they recovered a few million was all - IIRC
Owen Lucas
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If you like BLND you should look up MLFB, I bought 100,000 shares for $120. Stock fluctuates a lot during the day if you are into that. I just threw some change in because it might get pumped by the Game Stop AMC meme bandwagon.
Plural....any account
Zee09
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You're my kind of guy....
My days of playing hard are gone...no stress in a $120...bucks eh.. I hate BLND
but playing with it...
None that I recommend.
I do own BXSL, up over 50% but that's super risky
I have a lot of stuff that pays me, some might be a buy now. But again this is the kind of a place where I would only mention conservative time income funds, and maybe now is the time to buy back into bond funds, or the next idiotic rate hike.
Taxable account I assume.
JEPI could be a buy.
Need more information.
The bond guys are supposed to be the smartest guys in the room. Which makes me the dumbest guy in the room. Still I will open my mouth and remove all doubt.
For 40 years bond yields have been going down - which means long term bonds prices have been going up. You buy a bond, and continually roll it at a capital gain. Idiot proof. Still, long term bond funds for decades have traded sideways.
Even short term bond funds lost a ton this year. How could they not hedge out - the fed tells them what there going to do. Still, Vanguard's short term bond fund traded sideways for a decade or more, and is down like 7% this year. For a short term bond fund?
Pimco income fund is the worlds biggest bond fund. If you put money in it in 2008 - had a idea ahead of time the world would end. You would have been up 25% in 2013 and looked genius. Then traded sideways for a decade until the last year when its down like 17%, so you would be almost back to where you started.
I am obviously lost on this. I have no idea the purpose of a bond fund.
For 40 years bond yields have been going down - which means long term bonds prices have been going up. You buy a bond, and continually roll it at a capital gain. Idiot proof. Still, long term bond funds for decades have traded sideways.
Even short term bond funds lost a ton this year. How could they not hedge out - the fed tells them what there going to do. Still, Vanguard's short term bond fund traded sideways for a decade or more, and is down like 7% this year. For a short term bond fund?
Pimco income fund is the worlds biggest bond fund. If you put money in it in 2008 - had a idea ahead of time the world would end. You would have been up 25% in 2013 and looked genius. Then traded sideways for a decade until the last year when its down like 17%, so you would be almost back to where you started.
I am obviously lost on this. I have no idea the purpose of a bond fund.
I noticed that in my Fidelity account.
Zee09
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RH ups it regularly
Of course we know how that works.
As soon as J Powell said he would start to raise rates I would have immediately dumped anything bond fund related.
Yup...I've posted in the past how easy it is to use a brokerage account and a cash management account at Fidelity as a checking account/savings account and earn 4.5% on cash.
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In my simple mind most of the time bonds are at best for "capital preservation" to not lose money to inflation but you're also not making money. However, you can also lose money with bonds like anything else. Occasionally, rarely, there is a window where decent money can be made with bonds. I can see the advantage of increasing bond holdings as you get older for capital preservation but that's about it.
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But do you want a bond fund for capital preservation? They can loose money. You have no option to hold to maturity - the fund manager decides. Wouldn't treasuries be better?
This is Pimco - biggest bond fund I believe. The only time they made money was when fed went ZIRP. Either sideways or loss otherwise.
I was thinking about some CDs but decided just to stay 90% cash.
I really don’t like my cash locked up in CDs.
I split it up a bit. You have 90% in cash which we all know by now is a substantial sum of money. I would use 30% or whatever and buy a 90 day CD or Treasury. You really think in the next 90 days there will be some event that you will put that much money (90%) in the market?
If you have the balls for that, then go ahead.
I'm like the turtle, slow and solid, but then again I invest (spread risk) like a barbell, in buckets.
Really that chart looks as expected. A lot of people buy income funds or bonds for the INCOME, not necessarily for capital preservation. I know when I first observed this it was hard for me to fathom, but it's quite true. I mean you say "sideways" as if it's a bad word, but really that whole chart - if say you bought in 2007 until today and it paid you cash money every month, then there is no problem.
Would this fund be a smart choice in a long term retirement account? Of course NOT.
Again I don't have many income type funds in my tax protected accounts.
I do hold tax free municipal bonds and now some muni CEFs in my taxable accounts as I have stated before.
Will I buy bond funds if the economy starts throwing up on it's shoes? Probably.
Buckets and barbells. Invest in buckets for risk and timeline. Invest like a barbell if you have accumulated some wealth.
