Symbol: DLTNX Category: Core Bond Funds / Short Duration Funds Style: Active LB Rating: ***** 5 Stars Last Updated: 6 /17 /2013 Useful Links: Choosing a Bond Fund with LB Ratings About Core Bond Funds Bond Mutual Funds vs. Bond … [Read more...]
DoubleLine Opens Floating Rate Fund To The Public: Bringing Attention To Bank Loans As An Asset Class
DoubleLine has announced today, June 4th, that it will be opening its Floating Rate Fund to investment by the public on July 1st. The announcement was made during a webinar hosted by Jeffrey Gundlach titled “What in the World is Going On?”. Learn … [Read more...]
Why is SavingsBonds.com Selling CDs?
SavingsBonds.com is a family owned business which offers a valuable service to its clients. If you have a question about savings bonds, they can provide you the answer. Many people find dealing with the Treasury department, the government entity … [Read more...]
Investing in P2P Loans: Learn to Love Defaults and Late Payments
Investing in peer-to-peer loans can provide you double digit annual returns. However, you need to be prepared for defaults. Many borrowers aren’t going to pay off the full amount they owe. Ironically, a large number of defaults may be a sign that … [Read more...]
Bill Gross & Jeff Gundlach Make Bold Calls Based On Monetary Policy
Bond Gurus Jeff Gundlach of DoubleLine, and Bill Gross of PIMCO have started to make market calls that don’t directly have to do with the direction of interest rates or which type of bonds provide the most value. Rather, they have both started to … [Read more...]
Are municipal bonds currently a good investment?
The short answer is probably not. Certificates of deposit (CDs) are safer and have a major yield advantage, even after factoring in the tax benefits of municipal bonds. There are two main reasons that investors like to buy municipal bonds: The … [Read more...]
Want positive real returns? Brazil Tops PIMCO Index
PIMCO doesn’t publicize it, but they have several bond market indexes. One index tracks global inflation linked bonds. Most investors are familiar with the TIPS, the US Treasury’s inflation linked bond offering. Many governments offer inflation … [Read more...]
The BlackRock Bond Braintrust: EM Bonds Should Rise in Value & be Less Volatile
Recently, BlackRock hosted a “Fixed Income Roundtable” where they had several of their strategists and portfolio managers talk with the media. The lineup of speakers resembled the 2000 NY Yankees; every speaker was “hall-of-famer” or emerging … [Read more...]
A Strange Tale: How Muni Bonds Will Become Shares Of The Largest Airline
Municipal bondholders that purchased debt to finance airport expansions may become shareholders of the world’s largest airlines. They have been caught in a drama involving two airlines, one bankrupt (American Airlines) and one not (US Airways). The … [Read more...]
Are High Yield Bank Loans Better Than High Yield Bonds?
Fear of inflation and rising interest rates have prompted tremendous interest in mutual funds and closed end funds that invest in high yield bank loans. Bank loans have the magical quality of not losing value when interest rates rise because they … [Read more...]
Buying Convertible Bonds with Alan Muschott CFA
Alan Muschott, CFA has been the portfolio manager of the Franklin Convertible Securities Fund since 2002. Convertible securities are bonds or preferred stock that can, under certain conditions, be converted into common stock. While it’s not a 100% … [Read more...]
The De-Leveraging Supercycle & the Lack of Quality Assets
Conventional wisdom is that the market is being flooded with new bond issues. In 2012, $6.98 trillion in new bonds were issued in the United States. While the market is doing a good job absorbing the new issuance for now, it’s only a matter of time … [Read more...]
Is Lending Club going through growing pains?
I am a client of Lending Club. Lending Club and its main competitor, Prosper, facilitate peer-to-peer lending. They offer slick online platforms that make it easy for me to lend money to another person living in the US. For example, I could invest in … [Read more...]
The Guru Strategy For Bond Investing
The guru strategy is simple. 1) Pick a really smart investor, like Warren Buffet or David Einhorn. 2) Find out what securities they are holding. 3) Buy them. For stock investors, there are sites that make this process very easy like Guru … [Read more...]
Should you avoid bank bonds?
A year ago, Learn Bonds was suggesting that investors looking for additional yield might consider financial bonds. Goldman Sachs bonds maturing in 10 years were yielding a tad above 5.0%. While treasury interest rates are more or less the same as … [Read more...]
The S&P Lawsuit: Here’s What You Need to Know
Standard and Poor’s (S&P) is being sued by the Department of Justice for providing fraudulent ratings on certain debt securities. Several of these securities received, S&P’s highest rating (AAA) in 2007, only to default in 20008. The Justice … [Read more...]
The Facts About Dividend Investing (For Conservative Investors)
Yields on stocks and bonds have converged, causing many income investors to consider portfolio reallocation. A heavier stock allocation provides the potential for greater capital gains and dividend growth. At the same, it potentially increases … [Read more...]
Will this five star fund continue to thrive after the PM departs?
The Fund in question is Delaware High-Yield Opportunities Fund (DHOAX), which received a 5-star rating from Learn Bonds in early December of 2012. While the fund’s performance has been volatile, historically it has outperformed its peers over 1-, … [Read more...]
Rolling Down the Yield Curve: How to Make Money by Waiting
One of the easiest and time tested strategies for making money investing in bonds is called rolling down the yield curve. The strategy involves buying longer dated bonds and selling them after 2 to 3 years to profit from their rise in value during … [Read more...]
Where are the opportunities in high yield investing? An interview with Paul Matlack, CFA
Paul Matlack is a portfolio manager for Delaware High-Yield Opportunities Fund (DHOIX), one the strongest-performing high yield mutual funds over the last 10 years. While Paul only recently became a portfolio manager on the Fund, he has been helping … [Read more...]