CardsFan
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
The concern with bond funds is that with rates so near to zero and the Fed saying that they do not want to go with negative rates, that it is more likely that interest rates will go up rather than down or stay the same and the value of bonds and bond fund decline when interest rates rise.
BND has a duration of 6.4 years. In theory, if rates increase 1/2% then the value of bonds in BND would go down 3.2%... wiping out the 1.33% yield and then some.
Bond funds are fine, IMO, if you hold them for a very long period, well past the average duration. And you can simply rebalance with stocks as they go up and down.
But I only use short and intermediate duration bond funds and avoid long.
If thing go south - well, the damage has already been done, so you don’t get any benefit by selling when bond funds are down.
8 pages of pontification, when the answers were given in the first 7 responses
There is no cookie cutter answer. Do what makes sense FOR YOU, given the above info.