And so far, municipal bond funds have yet to lure back investors after sixteen relentless weeks of net outflows.
If you own municipal bond funds that out-yield the competition, then chances are the fund is chock full of tobacco bonds.
This last crash and burn week took municipal bond funds down badly.
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In a recent article titled Index Fund Portfolio Reign Superior, I created 10, 000 portfolios using actively-managed U.S. large cap funds, international large cap funds, and intermediate-term municipal bond funds.
Consider alternative investments for your intermediate-term goals like short-term bond funds, municipal bond funds or income funds that include dividend-paying stocks in the mix but watch for bonds with long maturities.
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My articles cover everything from art investment funds and pension trusts for artists to art investment vacations, but also plenty of straight investment topics such as exchange-traded funds and municipal bond funds.
In fact, Morningstar categorizes more than 60 municipal bond mutual funds as intermediate, of which several use one of the BarCap Municipal intermediate indices or similar index as a performance benchmark.
FORBES: Put Intermediate Muni Funds In Your Portfolio's Rotation
In addition to diversifying holdings, most municipal bond mutual funds offer an option for dividend reinvestment, so returns can compound over time.
FORBES: Put Intermediate Muni Funds In Your Portfolio's Rotation
Worse, two little-noticed but important bits of the market have imploded this month, and there are fears for a third, known as closed-end municipal-bond funds.
As investors chase yields, brokers are pushing them into municipal bonds and bond funds in record numbers.
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In order of popularity, respondents said they owned high-quality corporate, high-yield, international (including emerging market), Treasury (including TIPS) and municipal bonds and bond funds.
In spite of this, municipal bond closed-end funds are attractive.
Journal has an intriguing article on the heat cities are facing, in courts and municipal markets, for shuffling bond funds away from their intended purpose.
In the big scheme of things, the differences in composition between total bond market index funds and the actual U.S. bond market is not large (excluding municipal bonds).
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Treasury, corporate, municipal, high-yield and foreign bonds (and bond funds) can all play a role in your portfolio.
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For all those reasons, the market for municipal funds is roughly 0.2 percent of the corporate bond market, and less developed than those in emerging economies like South Africa and the Philippines, claimed Nagarajan Narasimhan, senior director of CRISIL Ratings.
Meanwhile, U.S. municipal bond yields spiked Tuesday, brushing eight-year highs, after selling by mutual funds whose investors are redeeming shares and players who can no longer afford their loans, according to Reuters.
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