Bond ETF Performance Update

The last update of bond funds was done on

 12/29/2014.

The purpose here is to get a sense of how various parts of the fixed income market have performed year-to-date.  We are still in a world of historically low short-term yields heavily influenced by global Central Bank policy led by the U.S. Federal Reserve.  In fact, the number 1 issue in markets today is when the Fed will raise rates (we are beyond the "if" stage) and the path rates will follow from there.

Here are the total year-to-date returns through 5/29/2015 as reported by Morningstar.

The first point to note is that performance was fairly tight.  Not much, if anything, was gained from going off index, i.e. investing in other than AGG.

No advantage was gained by exploiting the yield curve as seen by the 1.68% return on IEI versus 1.66% on IEF.

Some incremental performance was garnered for investing in riskier funds as seen by the 3.03% return on the emerging market fund EMB and the 2.36% on HYS, a short-term high yield fund.

This data is provided for educational purposes.  My clients and I own some funds listed in the table.