Long Term Treasury Bond Behavior

We have written several times on long term bonds. As many of our portfolios have long term bonds as candidate investments, we think that it deserves more investigation. In this newsletter, we will take a closer look at these investments. 

Long term bonds usually are referred to bonds that have more than 7 year maturity. There are many types of long term bonds. They can be corporate bonds, Treasury bonds, municipal bonds. Within long term bonds, they can be also classified with their credit ratings. iShares long term investment grade corporate bonds LQD is an ETF that invests in investment grade corporate bonds with long term maturities. The most famous long term Treasury bonds are the 10 year Treasury bonds, usually referred as T-Bond. As a terminology, the shortest term Treasury debt is called T-Bill whose maturity is 13 week. T-Bill is usually used as a proxy to Cash, which is what MyPlanIQ CASH symbol represents. 

T-Bond Historical Behavior

At the moment, 10 year Treasury bond (T-Bond)’s interest rate is 1.92%, close to historical low. The following chart shows its historical year by year returns since 1928 (data are from NYU Stern’s data, maintained by Professor Aswath Damodaran).