May 13, 2019: Total Return Bond ETFs Review

by | May 14, 2019 | Asset-Allocation, Bonds, Economy, Feature, Gold, Headline, Income, Inv, Investments, IRA, Markets, Mutual-Funds, newsletter, Portfolios, Retirement

Re-balance Cycle Reminder All MyPlanIQ’s newsletters are archived here.

For regular SAA and TAA portfolios, the next re-balance will be on Tuesday, May 28, 2019. You can also find the re-balance calendar for 2019 on ‘Dashboard‘ page once you log in.

As a reminder to expert users: advanced portfolios are still re-balanced based on their original re-balance schedules and they are not the same as those used in Strategic and Tactical Asset Allocation (SAA and TAA) portfolios of a plan.

Please note that we now list the next re-balance date on every portfolio page.

Total Return Bond ETFs Review

It’s time to look at total return bond ETFs again. Since our last review August 13, 2018: Total Return Bond ETF, there haven’t been any new actively managed total return bond ETFs. The three actively managed total return bond fund ETFs are:

Total return bond ETF performance comparison (as of 5/10/2019)
ETF NameFeeYTD
Return**		1Yr AR3Yr AR3Yr Sharpe5Yr AR
FBND (Fidelity Total Bond ETF)0.36%3.6%5.4%2.8%0.62 
FTBFX (Fidelity Total Bond)0.45%4.2%5.5%2.8%0.712.9%
BOND (PIMCO Total Return Active ETF)0.76%4.5%7.2%3.3%0.843.2%
PTTAX (PIMCO Total Return A)0.89%3.2%5.0%2.4%0.452.3%
TOTL (SPDR® DoubleLine Total Return Tact ETF)0.55%2.5%4.9%2.2%0.51 
DLTNX (DoubleLine Total Return Bond N)0.72%2.2%4.8%2.4%0.672.9%
BND (Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF) 3.5%6.0%2.0%0.372.5%

See detailed comparison >>

These ETFs can be used as alternatives for total return bond mutual funds. We maintain several portfolios (see total return bond fund fixed income portfolios on Brokerage Investors page) that use these bond funds as cash substitutes when they decide to go to ‘cash’. These include the following:

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