VanWinkle
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
I read an interesting article on Humble Dollar this morning worth sharing. He makes a good argument for a heavy equity allocation and the human side of needing comfort with our investing decisions.
"Individual bonds can be treacherous to sell if you need to unload them before maturity, plus they represent an undiversified bet and you can’t easily reinvest your interest payments, like you can with a mutual fund. What if the issuer doesn’t go bust and you hold to maturity? While the nominal return on conventional, fixed-rate bonds may be known with some precision, your after-inflation, after-tax return is up in the air, just as it is with a CD. Given all that, I’m baffled that investors prefer the illusory safety of individual bonds held to maturity to the much greater safety offered by bond mutual funds."
https://humbledollar.com/2024/03/comfort-has-a-cost/
"Individual bonds can be treacherous to sell if you need to unload them before maturity, plus they represent an undiversified bet and you can’t easily reinvest your interest payments, like you can with a mutual fund. What if the issuer doesn’t go bust and you hold to maturity? While the nominal return on conventional, fixed-rate bonds may be known with some precision, your after-inflation, after-tax return is up in the air, just as it is with a CD. Given all that, I’m baffled that investors prefer the illusory safety of individual bonds held to maturity to the much greater safety offered by bond mutual funds."
https://humbledollar.com/2024/03/comfort-has-a-cost/