#212 - Bonds vs. Bond Funds- Vanguard with Ted Dinucci

Wicked Pissah Podcast

Vanguard Hosts Brad Wright and Chris Boyd are joined by Ted Dinucci, an investment strategist with Vanguard’s Investment Advisory Research Center, the team tasked with creating thought leadership for their intermediary advisory partners across a range of investment, wealth management, and financial planning topics. They discuss: -Individual bonds vs bond funds - How to utilize each for income during retirement -Which is better during a falling interest rate environment

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Investment Advisory Research Center

OCTOBER 2022 Individual bonds versus bond funds: Our thoughts on the advisory practice and client outcomes

Key takeaways • Forecasting markets accurately is difficult. A much more reliable prediction to make: What questions clients will ask during periods of rising interest rates. Inevitably, rising rates environments prompt a flood of inquiries about whether advisors and their clients are better off purchasing individual bonds or pooled products, such as mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). These questions stem directly from the “principal at maturity” myth, which argues that bond funds will sell bonds at a loss when rates rise, while portfolios of individual bonds can be held to maturity and avoid losses. • Ultimately, bond funds operate the same way as portfolios of individual bonds when cash flows are being reinvested. However, the former generally offer greater return opportunities, lower transaction costs, and higher liquidity—as well as time savings for your practice—than comparable portfolios of individual bonds. Thus, advisors pursuing portfolios of individual bonds should expect to pay greater direct and indirect costs for maintaining complete control of client bond portfolios. The price tag for this control is higher for buyers of municipal and corporate bonds than for buyers of U.S. Treasuries. • Given the higher risks and costs associated with portfolios of individual bonds, and the time they take to manage, most advisors are better served by low-cost mutual funds and ETFs. Particularly in the case of municipal and corporate bonds, it is likely that only clients with enough resources to build a portfolio of comparable scale to a mutual fund (or ETF) can afford to pay the costs for these control advantages. • Consider this report as a resource to inform your client discussions—either for proactive conversations about fixed income portfolio decisions, or to satisfy questions and concerns clients bring to you. For clients who may be partial to holding individual bonds for emotional reasons, the following analysis provides you with empirical data points that could guide them to a more beneficial approach. We also believe the strategies outlined herein can ultimately empower you with more time for higher-value activities, such as deepening client relationships.

Authors: Ted Dinucci, CFA | Chris Tidmore, CFA, CPA | Chris Pettit, CFA Acknowledgments: The authors extend our thanks to Elizabeth Muirhead, CFA, and Edward Saracino for their contributions to this report, and to Donald G. Bennyhoff, CFA, and Scott J. Donaldson, CFA, for their prior research, which greatly informed this paper.

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Introduction The market and economic backdrop today appear highly uncertain, with the highest inflation in 40 years, a series of large rate hikes from the Federal Reserve, and Russia’s war in Ukraine, to name a few factors. Understandably, the confluence of these events has led to significant market volatility. It’s also led some investors to question the merits of pooled bond vehicles and to ask whether they may be better served by directly owning a portfolio of individual bonds. In some cases, there can be benefits to owning individual bonds, for instance, a nominal immunization strategy where the goal is matching portfolio cash flows to liabilities. However, for the vast majority of advisors and the investors they serve, the likely appeal of individual bonds is largely based on the principal at maturity myth, and embracing it is likely to diminish returns, diversification, and return on your time.

This paper offers our perspective on the primary advantages bond funds have over portfolios of individual bonds in the three key regards of returns, diversification, and return on your time (in exchange for less control over individual securities).1

More important,

for the vast majority, accessing fixed income via low- cost active or passive funds is likely to provide better

outcomes than the direct ownership of individual bonds—even with the hurdle of ongoing management fees. However, we’ll first address the flaws in the principal at maturity myth, since this misconception is what generates so much interest in the topic.

FIGURE 1. Benefits of choosing either a bond fund or individual bond

BOND FUNDS INDIVIDUAL BONDS INCREASED CONTROL ✓ INCREASED DIVERSIFICATION ✓ INCREASED RETURN OPPORTUNITIES ✓ LOWER TRANSACTION COSTS ✓

1 Vanguard 2017.

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FIGURE 1. Benefits of choosing either a bond fund or individual bond

BOND FUNDS INDIVIDUAL BONDS INCREASED CONTROL ✓ INCREASED DIVERSIFICATION ✓ INCREASED RETURN OPPORTUNITIES ✓ LOWER TRANSACTION COSTS ✓

The principal at maturity myth Holding an individual bond to maturity offers little to no financial benefit to you or your clients versus a pooled product when cash flows are reinvested, as often occurs in laddered individual bond strategies.2

Both portfolios operate in a similar way, but the laddered portfolio is likely to incur greater trading costs and have less diversification. The way that advisors account for laddered bonds in their client statements—by not marking the bonds to their current value, in order to avoid recognizing a paper loss—helps to reinforce the behavioral bias and may mitigate business risk for the advisor. Ultimately, bond prices are inversely related to changes in interest rates: When interest rates rise, the bond’s price falls, and vice versa. This is because a bond’s coupon payments are typically fixed at issuance, leaving price as the only variable that can be adjusted to make the bond’s yield competitive with that of newly issued bonds of similar risk and maturity. This is illustrated in Figure 2. If 10-year bonds are currently yielding 4%, the price of a 2% coupon bond—to be competitive—must decline to a level that results in a 4% yield-to-maturity. In this example, that price is 83.65% of the face value (or $836.50 per $1,000 face value). The 2% bond would provide the same return as the 4% coupon bond trading at par, but some of the return would come from the bond’s appreciation from $836.50 to its $1,000 value at maturity, as opposed to the coupon payments. This price adjustment punctures the common myth that holding an individual bond to maturity will provide a financial benefit to your clients. Absent transaction costs, when interest rates change, prices adjust so that total returns will be equal from that point forward, regardless of whether the bond is held to maturity or sold at the prevailing market price with the proceeds reinvested.

FIGURE 2. How bond prices adjust to keep yields-to-maturity the same A comparison of hypothetical bonds with 10 years to maturity Coupon (annual interest payment) 6% 4% 2% Market price as a percentage of face value 116.35% 100% 83.65% Yield to maturity 4% 4% 4% Source: Vanguard. This hypothetical illustration does not represent any particular investment and the rate is not guaranteed.

FIGURE 3. Total returns closely match starting yields, regardless of whether prices are above (or below) par 14.0% 12.0% 10.0% 8.0% 6.0% 4.0% 2.0% 0.0% 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 Forward annualized return versus starting yield

Starting yield Forward annualized return when starting price is above par Forward annualized return when starting price is below par

Figure 3 demonstrates this point by comparing the forward annualized return for the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index, adjusted for duration, with its starting yield. Here, it is readily apparent that future returns closely track starting yields. Moreover, the narrative doesn’t change whether the index is trading above or below par. Therefore, when evaluating bonds with the same characteristics but with different coupon payments, it is always best to compare their yields to maturity.3 Notes: Returns represent the annualized return on the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index using monthly data for the period that aligns with the index’s starting modified adjusted duration, rounded to the nearest month. For instance, if on December 31, 2005, the duration on the index was 5 years, the forward annualized return would be from January 1, 2006, to December 31, 2010. Yields represent the index’s yield to worst (YTW) at the start of each calculation period. YTW is a measure for the lowest possible yield that may be earned on a bond absent the issuer defaulting. The last observation in the figure is September 30, 2015, because after that date the index’s starting duration is longer than the time series. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. The performance of an index is not an exact representation of any particular investment, as you cannot invest directly in an index. Sources: Vanguard analysis of Bloomberg data, as of March 2022. 2 Laddering refers to building a portfolio of bonds with a range of maturities. 3 Yield-to-maturity is the percentage rate of return on a bond, assuming that the bond is held to maturity. For bonds that may be called prior to their stated maturity, yield-to-worst is a preferable measure, as it accounts for the bond’s call feature and represents the lowest possible yield that may be earned assuming no default.

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As mentioned, this principal at maturity myth typically surfaces only when interest rates rise or are expected to rise. If rising rates mean there is a financial benefit to holding bonds to maturity, then falling rates should mean there is a benefit to selling them and reinvesting the proceeds in new bonds. Thus, an active trading strategy would be preferred over a simple buy-and-hold, laddered bond portfolio to take advantage of the market inefficiency. Ironically, this environment has been the norm for the past 20-plus years, yet the trading concept has not been endorsed by the investment community. One doesn’t hear that when interest rates are falling, an open-end mutual fund or ETF with no set maturity date is the preferred structure. Thus, the appeal of holding a bond to maturity is likely emotional, as by not selling a bond at a discount to par, your clients are able to avoid the mental roadblock of “recognizing” a loss. Rather than let this behavioral bias win, advisors can seize this as an opportunity to flex their coaching muscles and leverage the trust they’ve built with clients to help produce better outcomes. Consider this analogy: Just because you chose not to sell your house when prices dipped does not mean it’s worth more than the home of your neighbors, who did sell. The same logic applies to fixed income—whether the bonds are held individually, in a bond fund, or in a separately managed account (SMA).4 Diversification can mean higher returns for similar levels of risk In fixed income investing, diversification among issuers, credit qualities, and term structures is a primary consideration for municipal and corporate bonds. For laddered bond portfolios, issuance calendars do not offer consistent access to all types of bonds. On the contrary, with bond funds, greater diversification is possible because of the larger pool of investable assets and the continuous investment in new offerings. This, coupled with the professional staff needed to conduct risk, trade, and credit analysis allows funds to seek return opportunities farther out on the credit quality spectrum than is possible for an advisor. In the case of the latter, their clients may be seriously affected if even one issuer in their (much smaller) portfolio encounters problems.

In the case of corporate bonds (and munis), the dynamic nature of credit risk makes it essential to diversify issuer- specific risk. The price volatility that results from a change in an issuer’s credit rating is typically asymmetrical:

When a credit downgrade occurs, a bond usually will drop much further in price than it would rise on news of an upgrade. This means that for holders of individual corporate bonds, the penalty for choosing a bond that is downgraded is usually greater than the reward for choosing one that gets upgraded. Professional fund managers who are fully focused on credit analysis may be better suited to spot these trends sooner and avoid the negative effects of downgrades and defaults.

FIGURE 4. Incremental pickups in yields available relative to AA rated corporates Average option-adjusted spread

Average cumulative defaults

0.0% 0.2% 0.4% 0.6% 0.8% 1.0% 1.2% 1.4% 1.6%

0.0% 0.5% 1.0% 1.5% 2.0% 2.5% 3.0% 3.5% 4.0%

AA rated Broad investment-grade Credit quality 0.98%

0.55%

As a result, many individual bond portfolios exhibit a higher-quality bias relative to bond funds because of the inability to fully benefit from diversification. As shown in Figure 4, higher return opportunities, in terms of incremental yield, are available beyond AA rated corporates to compensate for the low, but always possible, risk of default—even when staying within the corporate investment-grade universe. A more diversified approach that spans the spectrum of investment-grade corporates can translate into a meaningful increase in yield without sacrificing the primary role of high-quality fixed income in a portfolio—acting as a ballast to risk assets. It should be noted that diversification of credit quality can also be achieved through passive exposure.

Notes: Average option-adjusted spreads (OAS) cover the period of January 1997 to April 2022. AA rated as represented by ICE BofA US Corporate Index Option-Adjusted Spread; and broad investment-grade as represented by ICE BofA US Corporate Index Option-Adjusted Spread. OAS is a measure of the difference in yield of a bond and the comparable risk-free rate, adjusted to account for any embedded option. Analysis begins with AA rated corporates, as there are only two AAA rated corporate issuers. Average cumulative defaults are calculated by FitchRatings and represent the 10-year average cumulative defaults for the period of January 1990 to December 2021. Default rates are calculated on an issuer or security basis as opposed to dollar amounts. Sources: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, FitchRatings, and Vanguard analysis, as of April 2022. 4 Separately managed accounts are investment portfolios that are directly owned by an investor and managed by a professional investment firm.

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FIGURE 5. Growth of hypothetical $1 million initial investment from January 1997 Ending wealth in (million USD) $3.2 $3.3 $3.4 $3.5 $3.6 $3.7 $3.8 $3.9 $4.0

AA corporates

Broad I-G corporates

$4.1 $4.2

Ending wealth with AA corporates Excess wealth with lower quality

Figure 5 translates the lost return opportunities in Figure 3 into actual excess wealth created by expanding the investment opportunity set beyond AA rated bonds.5 For a long-term investor, being broadly invested in investment-grade corporates would have produced an additional $400,000 of nominal wealth, given a hypothetical, initial $1 million investment in 1997, relative to the same investment in AA rated corporates. Moreover, through broad diversification, as an advisor, you would be able to increase your client’s long-term expected returns for their fixed income holdings, while significantly reducing single-issuer risk and still maintain high overall credit quality.

Notes: Figure assumes a hypothetical initial $1 million investment on January 1, 1997, and held until April 30, 2022. AA corporates as represented by ICE BofA 5–10 Year AA US Corporate Index; and broad I-G corporates as represented by ICE BofA 5–10 Year US Corporate Index. Sources: Vanguard analysis of Morningstar data, as of April 2022. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. The performance of an index is not an exact representation of any particular investment, as you cannot invest directly in an index. Transaction costs are real, but often go overlooked All bond portfolios incur costs. Though the management cost component often receives the lion’s share of attention because it is readily apparent and known in advance, it also represents only one part of the equation. Less scrutinized, but similarly detrimental to long-term financial outcomes are transaction costs (e.g., bid-ask spreads). Ultimately, bid-ask spreads tend to vary by trade size and bond sector, and the size of the spread is typically larger for small transactions. Bond mutual funds and ETFs buy and sell large quantities of bonds, and these large transactions can command higher prices for sales and lower prices for buys. So long as the size of the spreads paid or received are inversely related to purchase lot size, bond funds have a transaction cost advantage over individual bond portfolios. The benefits of scale are most significant in the municipal bond market, but still relevant and tell a similar story to that of corporates. Figure 6 illustrates this point. It shows that in the municipal bond market, the spread for a retail trade (less than $100,000 per bond) on average has been consistently higher than that for an institutional trade. Specifically, between January 2019 and April 2021 the effective spread for transactions with a par value between $25,001 and $100,000 averaged 56.4 basis points (bps), while transactions with a par value of over $1 million averaged 20.2 bps. This differential translates to lower total return for clients who are not able to transact at scale.6 Additionally, large firms, such as Vanguard, are able to get the broadest access to bonds in the primary market, so it’s not only about the size of the trade and lower costs, but also what bonds one gets to purchase. This is especially important as there tends to be a drop-off in liquidity as time passes from issuance.

FIGURE 6. Spreads are significantly wider for retail trades relative to institutional trades (bps)

$10,000 or less $10,001- $25,000 $25,001- $100,000 $100,001- $1 million $1 million+ 20.2

56.4 35.5

63.6 81.9

In the end, higher spreads translate into lower returns. Whether creating a taxable or tax-exempt bond portfolio for a client, the basic decision comes down to this: Does the fund expense ratio detract less from the portfolio’s total return than (1) the return surrendered by a higher credit-quality bias, if one exists, (2) the default risk, if there is no quality bias, or (3) the additional transaction costs? It would be rare for the fund expense ratio (particularly in the case of a lower-cost bond fund) to be larger than the other costs. Notes: The above figure shows the average effective spread for municipal bond transactions of various sizes from January 2019 to April 2021. Effective spread is a measure of customer transaction costs and is computed daily for each bond as the difference between the volume-weighted average dealer-to-customer buy and sell price, and is then averaged across bonds using equal weighting. Sources: MSRB data and Vanguard analysis. 5 Though an advised client’s fixed income portfolio is unlikely to be comprised of only intermediate-term (5- to 10-year maturity) U.S. corporate bonds. 6 As a simple example, if constructing an initial bond portfolio with an average duration of five years and transaction costs of 50 bps, it would translate to 10 bps per year.

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Control of the portfolio One, or perhaps the only, advantage of self-directed individual bond portfolios and, to some extent, SMAs over pooled vehicles is the owner’s ability to influence portfolio decisions. The motivation for maintaining control generally falls into three camps: strict portfolio guidelines that place firm restrictions on portfolio characteristics, such as credit-quality (e.g., all-AA portfolio) or limits on derivatives usage; matching portfolio cash-flows with specific liabilities (e.g., cash-flow matching); and tax concerns. Given the inflexibility of the first, and presumably, high-level of certainty of the second, we’ll focus on the potential tax considerations, as certain common beliefs may be overstated and therefore warrant a discussion. Regarding taxes: Because clients directly own the bonds in an SMA or a laddered bond portfolio, as their advisor you can use any net losses from individual bond positions for tax purposes to partially offset your client’s earned income or to offset realized capital gain liabilities from other investments. A mutual fund or ETF, on the other hand, cannot pass through realized losses to its shareholders. Instead, the fund uses realized losses against realized gains, and carries forward any excess losses to be used against future gains. Although this may defer the pass-through of losses, it provides long-term tax efficiency to the pooled structure. In addition, as the advisor, you have a further option: You can sell your clients’ fund shares to realize a loss where applicable. Regarding individual bond portfolios or SMAs, another factor to consider is that to take advantage of losses in these accounts, you will incur transaction costs for

your clients on both the sale of the current bond and the purchase of the new bond.

Though all the above applies to both taxable and tax- exempt bonds, in terms of the latter, there is often the

additional consideration of alternative minimum taxes (AMT). With an individual bond portfolio or SMA, the portfolio can be tailored to bonds that are exempt from AMT or specific to issues from your client’s home state. While this is true, it is important to acknowledge that there are currently a number of state-specific vehicles available for your clients—particularly in states with high tax rates. Also, though it’s sometimes forgotten, the key point that advisors should be concerned with is seeking to maximize client after-tax returns, rather than with minimizing taxes. Bonds issued outside a client’s home state and bonds subject to AMT often carry higher yields to maturity.

As a result, your clients may well get higher after- tax returns from a portfolio including such bonds. In

addition, clients gain from increased diversification—an important benefit. With the preceding considerations in mind, it may be impractical to transition clients from their existing SMA solutions or portfolios of individual bonds into a primarily fund-aligned strategy. For advisors that already utilize an SMA or construct their own bond sleeves, a bond fund can serve as a strong complement—by providing some additional liquidity to the portfolio and a solution for reinvesting periodic cash flows from their individual bond holdings (or SMAs) to reduce potential cash drag.

Conclusion For the reasons described in this paper, the vast majority of advisors who invest for their clients are best served through low-cost bond funds. Only those advised clients with the resources to achieve scale comparable to that of a mutual fund should consider putting certain control features ahead of the benefits that a pooled investment vehicle offers. Funds generally provide better diversification, greater return opportunities, lower transaction costs, and higher liquidity for your clients. For advisors, the time savings from outsourcing the day-to-day portfolio management can be reinvested in higher returning opportunities, such as deepening client relationships and growing your practice. Although bonds that are held directly can provide certain advantages over bond mutual funds—primarily related to control over security-specific decisions—such control comes at a cost. To construct an individual bond portfolio, an advisor must assign a very high value to the control benefits to justify the higher costs and additional risks involved.

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References Bennyhoff, Donald, Scott Donaldson, Jamese Dunlap, and Daren Roberts, 2017. A topic of current interest: Bonds or bond funds? Valley Forge, Pa.: The Vanguard Group. Bennyhoff, Donald G., 2009. Municipal bond funds and individual bonds. Valley Forge, Pa.: The Vanguard Group. Donaldson, Scott J., 2009. Taxable bond investing: bond funds or individual bonds? Valley Forge, Pa.: The Vanguard Group. Li, David, Charlotte L. Needham, and Jake Han, 2022. 2021 Transition and Default Studies. FitchRatings. Wu, Simon Z., and Nicholas J. Ostroy, 2021. Transaction Costs During the COVID-19 Crisis: A Comparison between Municipal Securities and Corporate Bond Markets. Washington, D.C., Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board.

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