With 65 percent of S&P in correction, maybe it is time for bonds again

1. For individual bonds, you can ladder them.

This means buying bonds with consecutive annual maturities, i.e., maturing every year for the next five years, and when the bond that matures in one year matures, reinvest the principal into a new bond with a five-year maturity. It’s a compromise that allows for adjustments to changes in interest rates and inflation, but it lowers your interest income because you didn’t invest all of your funds into just the five-year bond.

2. With traditional mutual funds, you can build a diversified portfolio of bonds and maturities.

Since these bond funds won’t actually have a finite maturity date, you could rebalance them periodically since their dollar amounts will fluctuate, some more than others. This way, you could stick with an appropriate risk/reward level and take advantage of price discrepancies between the bond funds.

For example, let’s say an investor invests an equal amount into a money market fund yielding 2 percent and three different kinds of investment-grade bond ETFs: short-term, mid-term and long-term. Due to rising interest rates, the long- term went down 12 percent, the mid-term one went down 6 percent, and the short term one went down 2 percent, while the money market fund was up by 2 percent. Obviously, the value of all four positions has changed, which offers a chance to the investor to rebalance the bond funds back to the original allocations.

3. Newer bond ETFs offer the diversification of a bond fund with the maturity date of an individual bond.

ETF companies, including BlackRock and Invesco, have developed bond ETFs, both corporate and munis, with maturity dates. I use these to build highly diversified, laddered bond portfolios. They make this last part much easier to execute and understand. An investor can use these ETFs to build out a portfolio with consecutive annual maturities, reinvesting this year’s maturing bond ETF into a new one five years out.

It’s often been said that bonds are boring, but this year’s declines as the Fed raises rates have made them more exciting — and frightening. But for most of my clients who invest in them, the boring nature for which bonds can usually be depended on is a good thing.