Comparing Nine Asset Categories

Bonds continue to show the more favorable results, as viewed through two-year, weekly charts. Stocks, real estate and commodities remain in intermediate-term down trends.

click images to enlarge

The national municipal bond ETF (MUB) is up, but a more granular view of municipal bonds through Vanguard mutual funds, shows that the short-term munis are rising, the intermediate-term munis are in modest decline, and the long-term muni bonds are down significantly enough to negate a year of more of income. Right now there may be a tug-of-war between credit quality concerns on the negative side, and tax advantages in a rising tax rate period on the positive side.

[Securities in the images: SHV, AGG, MUB, SPY, EFA, EEM, VNQ, DBC, UUP, VWSTX, VWITX, VWLTX]

Comments

[Larry House:]

Thanks very much. Useful info.

Apr 29 11:25 AM

[RiskReturnO...:]

I think you may get the same results by dividing AGG by duration. Long term bonds (corporates or munis) offer great excess returns vs. comparable treasuries, but if treasury yields keep going up, then actual returns may be negative. The only way to try to make money on longer duration corporates (or munis) is somehow hedgeing for increasing treasury yield, and profiting from spread compression. Not easy for individual (ETF) investors to do.

Apr 29 11:53 AM