User 151033

Bond Market Needs Revolutionary Change For Investors' Sake

The simple fact is that the bond market isn't centralized as the stock market is. There isn't a bond "exchange." They do not trade like either stocks or mutual funds and probably never will, though some such as debentures and NYSE bonds do. 95% of the bond market is institutional, 5% retail investors. But DYI can nevertheless peruse various bonds, their prices, and yields on several different websites, investinginbonds.com being one of them, and of course they can buy bonds with several online discount brokers. The info's out there; it just doesn't have the hype stocks and funds do.

A bond is far superior to any fixed income or bond etf or fund, in my judgment, because it has a maturity date and you know exactly what your total return will be; bond etfs and funds are in effect perpetuals without either a maturity or call date. Bonds are the risk averse assets that, in the long run, will outperform stocks and allow you to sleep at night, an argument that most retail investors, bombarded as they are everyday by the buzz from the stock and fund industry and their spin doctors, have difficulty believing. Boring old bonds! Not very exciting. Indeed that's their virtue. BTW, global or foreign bonds are very risky for countless reasons. Good luck with that.