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April 27, 2015 at 05:39 AM
Ask any Wall Street pro and they’ll probably tell you there’s plenty to hate about bonds. The yield income is paltry and the impact of higher interest rates ahead would do serious damage. Yet, Wall Street’s doom and gloom forecasts for the bond market continue to be wrong.
Instead of crashing, the price of long-term U.S. Treasuries (TLT) has increased 21.74% over the past year. That’s better than both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500. Only the Nasdaq 100’s gain of 26.22% has managed to beat boring Treasuries.
Treasury bulls that use leverage have done even better. The Direxion Daily 20+ Yr Treasury Bull 3x Shares (TMF) and ProShares Ultra 20+ Yr Treasury ETF (UBT) have scored sizzling gains of 70% and 45% respectively. TMF aims for triple daily performance to long-term U.S. Treasuries while UBT uses double, or 2x, daily leverage.
Since the start of 2015, the iShares Barclays 20+ Yr Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) is once again beating both the Dow and S&P 500 with a 4.1% gain.
Meanwhile, the Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF (BND), a broader measure of the U.S. bond market, is holding steady with a 2.03% versus gains of 1.8% to 2.5% for the Dow and S&P. Did I mention the 12-month yield for BND trumps both stock market benchmarks?
Interestingly, the iShares Short Term Treasury Bond ETF (SHY) has amassed $8.5 billion in assets despite carrying a 12-month yield of just 0.39% while charging annual expenses of 0.15%. The silver lining is that bonds with shorter durations of three years or less are adversely impacted much less compared to bonds with longer durations when interest rates climb.
