A popular question from my friends is “Where do I go for income in this low-yield environment?” There isn’t an easy answer.
Here’s why: Yields on money market funds are near 0%, and long-term Treasury bond funds are yielding below 3%. Vanguard’s Total Bond Market Index Fund is currently yielding 2.4%*, as of November 3, 2011. And for muni bond investors, our Vanguard Intermediate-Term Tax-Exempt Fund has an SEC yield of 2.55%* as of November 3, 2011, based on its current holdings.
It’s still early in the new year, and there’s lots to worry about in the investment domain and in the broader world. But one item tops my “worry list” for 2010: interest rates. And it’s hard to decide which is the greater worry—the status quo, or a change in it.
One of the smartest people I know—a brilliant copy editor—used to shake her head as she read articles about bonds and the bond market.
“I think you have to be born with the bond gene to understand bonds,” she would mutter.
What set Mary to muttering, as I recall, was the fact that bond prices tend to move in the opposite direction of interest rates.
