This leads me to the other advantage of bonds over bond funds: you can pick the maturity date and know with a high degree of certainty when you are going to get your money back.

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One, the yield to the worst call date is much better than yield to maturity of a non-callable bond (aka, bullet bond).

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The fact that early bonds had no fixed maturity date ensured that any change in interest rate was fully reflected in the capital value of the bond.

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