Comments on Triaging My Way To Financial Success: The Bond Guide – Investment Guide to Corporate Bon...

Thanks for the great website and info on Canadian ...

2009-07-19T04:18:32.462-04:00

Thanks for the great website and info on Canadian bonds. Im a private investor, fed up with being willfully kept in the dark about the genuine value of bonds.

From the link you provided to CBID i can now see my broker charges me something close to 2 basis points on bond purchases, which makes it very difficult to make capital gains when my bonds premium value goes up.

I know you are probably not supposed to give advice but i was wondering what you think about private investors actively trading bonds (so buying investment grade at a discount and selling when the price goes premium)?

I ask because before reading all the great links you have provided i always thought of bonds as safe but rather boring as i believed one was always limited to the profit on the yields. Ive noticed now that many bonds i have bough at discount are worth perhaps 7 or 8 basis points more now.

Im very tempted to sell those bonds with a nice capital gain, and just reivest into other quality bonds at par or at a slight discount.

Any comments would be appreciated. Thanks.

Jordan - I'll take some time in the next few d...

2009-06-17T00:23:04.000-04:00

Jordan - I'll take some time in the next few days to follow up with some answers in a post on the site.

Thanks for the great information. I have one que...

2009-06-16T14:48:18.528-04:00

Thanks for the great information. I have one question. I have owned the TD Bond Index Fund (TDB909) for a number of years. During that time, the fund is always close to book value. I would have thought that, as interest rates have fallen over the past months (many months), that the market value of the fund would have increased. Nobody has been able to explain this to me and I am starting to wonder why I don't sell them and purchase corporate bonds directly.

I would appreciate any information.

thanks

Well researched. This is still an incomplete descr...

2009-04-26T07:27:00.000-04:00

Well researched. This is still an incomplete description of investing in fixed-income.

You point to Hank Cunningham's website and book, but fail to mention one of his key strategies.

Aside from buying a diversity of corporate bonds (rated BBB or above) and mixing that with some nicely paying provincial bonds.

The concept is to LADDER YOUR DIVERSIFIED BOND PORTFOLIO.
this means that you buy one bond (or two or three, depending on the amount of money you have to invest) for each year up to ten years into the future.
If you structure your portfolio so that every few months a new bond comes to maturity, you can reduce credit risk, interest rate risk, inflation risk and term risk. Also you eliminate the need to sell your bonds before maturity.
The concept of staggering the maturity of your bonds is the final, and crucial step to creating a truly boring, sleep-at-night portfolio that is still capable of a cash yield approximately 5% above the inflation rate.
it provides the flexibility to keep the riskiest corporate bonds in the short-term and even some real-return bonds in the long-term to hedge further against inflation.
every investor has unique needs. A laddered portfolio can be tailored to any of them.
not bad, and not much less then the return on the typical 'diversified' equity portfolio.

personally, i keep 90% of my portfolio in fixed income and cash and a few blue-chip dividend payers to pay off the excess tax. I lost nothing in the meltdown and have seized the opportunity to get some great discounts.

'In Your Best Interest" by Hank Cunningham is the only investment book the retail investor ever needs to read, IMO. The strategy espoused in the book works in literally any stage of any economic cycle.

the total paid in commissions is about 1% of the purchase or about .1% of your total assets per year. less expensive and better yield than any bond etf. etfs also do not mature, a key feature of individual bonds. holding bonds past 10 years is unnecessary as the yield will not increase enough to justify holding a bond for longer than that.

Scott: Many thanks go to you for having the patien...

2009-03-30T21:35:00.000-04:00

Scott: Many thanks go to you for having the patience for all my questions.

Susan: I think one of the leading motivations for me to take the time to research and write this post is to bring to the attention of investors the importance of focusing on fixed income in your overall portfolio. Fixed income serves a number of important roles and maximizing returns in bonds is just as important as in equities.

Wow! What a great piece on bonds. This pulls tog...

2009-03-30T17:30:00.000-04:00

Wow! What a great piece on bonds. This pulls together some of the info I have and adds to it, so it's all in one neat package. The equity side of my portfolio gets way more attention than the fixed income side, but this will be a springboard to looking closer at the fixed income.
Thanks, Brad. This is greatly appreciated.

Very nicely done, Brad. :)

2009-03-30T15:19:00.000-04:00

Very nicely done, Brad. :)