History is littered with examples of prognosticators getting market calls wrong. Case in point: the widespread expectations that the Fed would raise rates in the summer or fall of 2015. So while it is hard to predict the future, it is clear that there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the future of interest rates and the outlook for bonds. That’s one reason to consider a bond ladder.
“Laddering bonds may be appealing now because it may help you to manage interest rate risk, and to make ongoing reinvestment decisions over time, giving you the flexibility to invest in different credit and interest rate environments,” says Roger Young, senior vice president of fixed income at Fidelity Capital Markets.
Bond ladders are just one of many options for investors looking for steady income, from a simple CD to different flavors of annuities, individual bonds, or professionally managed mutual funds. Like all these options, bond ladders have their advantages and disadvantages, but many investors decide to build a bond ladder because it can help manage the risks of changing interest rates and customize a stream of income.
Managing reinvestment risk
Interest payments from the bonds in a ladder can provide scheduled cash flows. In addition, the ladder can help you manage reinvestment risk. Say you put all your fixed income investments in a single bond. That bond eventually would mature, the issuer would return your principal, and you’d have to purchase a new bond if you wanted to continue generating income or maintain your portfolio’s asset allocation mix. But if interest rates and bond yields had decreased in the meantime, you wouldn’t be able to generate as much income as before with the same amount invested—at least not without taking on additional investment risk. That’s a predicament some investors who rely on investment income won’t want to find themselves in.
Building a bond ladder has the potential to diversify this reinvestment risk across a number of bonds that mature at different intervals. Imagine that yields fall as one rung in your ladder approaches maturity. If you choose to reinvest, you will have to invest only a fraction of your bond portfolio at the lower rate. Meanwhile, the other bonds in the portfolio will continue generating income at the relatively higher older rates. So the impact of falling rates may be smaller with a ladder than with a bullet strategy that targets a single maturity date or than with an investment in a small number of bonds.
What if yields and interest rates increase? A bond ladder regularly frees up a slice of your portfolio, so you can take advantage of the new, higher rates. If you have all your money invested in a "bullet" strategy, with a single maturity date, you might be able to reinvest at higher yields. But what if your bonds didn't reach maturity while rates are higher? If none of your holdings matures during the time of higher rates—you might miss out.
“A bond ladder gives you a framework in which to balance the reinvestment opportunities of short-term bonds with the potentially higher yields that longer-term bonds typically offer,” says Richard Carter, Fidelity vice president of fixed income products and services.
Having a well-diversified bond ladder does not guarantee that you will avoid a loss, but it can help protect you the way that any diversified portfolio does, by helping to manage the risk of any single investment.
Bond ladder considerations
While building a bond ladder may help you manage interest rate and reinvestment risk to some extent, there are six important guidelines to consider to make sure you are diversified and to attempt to protect yourself from undue credit risk.
1. Hold bonds until they reach maturity.
It’s important that you have enough money set aside to meet your short-term needs and deal with emergencies. You should also have a temperament that will allow you to ride out the ups and downs of the market. That’s because many of the benefits of bond ladders—such as an income plan and managing interest rate and credit risk—are based on the idea that you keep your bonds in your portfolio until they mature. If you sell early—either because you need cash or you change your investment plans—you will be exposed to additional risks, including the risks of loss or decreased yield from your ladder. In fact, if you don’t hold bonds to maturity, you may experience similar interest-rate risk as a comparable-duration bond fund. So, if you don’t know how long you can hold the bonds, you may want to consider a shorter ladder.
2. Start with at least $100,000.1
This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, but because bonds generally must be purchased in minimum denominations (often $1,000 or $5,000), $100,000 or more is often required to achieve a degree of diversification across a broad range of different issuers in different sectors. In fact, you may need to start with a larger investment, depending on the types of bonds you wish to hold. The reason: The lower the credit rating of the bonds in a ladder, the greater the number of bonds that may be required to diversify against the risk of default. For example, with a ladder composed of corporate bonds, you may want to consider a minimum investment of at least $200,000. The table to the right shows the suggested number of issuers. If you can’t invest enough to diversify, you may want to look at other income options, like diversified bond mutual funds or annuities.
The table to the right offers some illustration of how many different issuers may be required to help achieve diversification at different credit ratings.
3. Build your ladder with high-credit-quality bonds.
Because the purpose of a bond ladder is to provide consistent income over a long period of time, taking excessive amounts of risk probably doesn’t make sense. So you may want to consider only higher-quality bonds. You can use ratings as a starting point to find those bonds. For instance, select only bonds rated “A” or better. But even ratings have limits; they could change or be outdated, so you should do additional research to ensure you are comfortable investing in a security you are intending to hold for potentially many years.
How do bond ratings work?
Two of the major independent credit rating services are Moody's and Standard & Poor's. They research the financial health of each bond issuer (including issuers of municipal bonds) and assign ratings to the bonds being offered. A bond's rating helps you assess that bond's credit quality compared with other bonds.
The bonds in a ladder are intended to be held until maturity, so price declines caused by rating downgrades generally won’t affect the income stream. But investors need to remember that bonds can go through more than one downgrade in rapid succession, heightening the market’s perception of default risk. Higher-quality bonds offer another advantage as well: These investments typically come with lower transaction costs, which can help manage the expenses associated with this strategy. Order size can also influence transaction costs—generally, a larger order will see lower transaction expenses per bond.
4. Avoid the highest-yielding bonds at any given credit rating.
You may feel tempted to choose the highest-yielding bonds for whatever credit rating or maturity you have chosen, figuring they represent a bargain—more yield for the same amount of risk.
Resist that temptation. You need to understand why a bond is offering a higher yield. An unusually high yield relative to similar bonds is often an indication that the market is anticipating a downgrade or perceives that bond to have more risk than the others and therefore has traded the bond’s price down (thereby increasing its yield). That can happen in advance of an official downgrade and may be too risky for your ladder. One potential exception is that in the municipal bond market, buyers often pay a premium for the most familiar issuers, meaning that higher yields may be available from smaller issuers.
5. Keep callable bonds out of your ladder.
Part of the beauty of a bond ladder is the scheduled cash flow; you know when the bonds will mature and you know how much you will need to reinvest. But when a bond is called prior to maturity, its interest payments cease and the principal is returned as of the call date—altering both your cash flow schedule and the schedule of principal coming due. You may want to select bonds that can’t be called away early.
6. Think about time and frequency.
Another important feature of a bond ladder is the total length of time the ladder will cover and the number of rungs, or how often the bonds in the ladder are scheduled to mature, returning your principal. A ladder with more rungs will require a larger investment but will provide a greater range of maturities, and if you choose to reinvest, this means you will have more opportunities to gain exposure to future interest rate environments.
A case study: building a bond ladder
To see how you can build a ladder using Fidelity’s Bond Ladder Tool, let’s take a hypothetical case in which Matt wants to invest $100,000 to produce a stream of income until he reaches retirement, in about 10 years. Matt decides to start with his investment amount—though the tool would have let him target a level of income as well. He sets his timeline and asked for a ladder with five rungs of about $20,000 each. Then he chooses bond types. In order to be broadly diversified, the rungs each contain a range of bonds and FDIC-insured CDs at different credit rating levels, but all of them are at least investment grade.
Matt elects the option to have the tool suggest bonds for each rung. So on the next screen, the tool suggests a bond for each rung of the ladder and shows a summary of the ladder, including the expected yield and annual interest payments.
Another view lets Matt review the schedule of when to expect interest payments and the return of principal—providing a view into the cash flow he could expect if he chooses to purchase the suggested bond ladder.
Matt’s expected cash flows appear to decrease over time, but he may be able to extend that income by reinvesting the returned principal each time one of the bonds matures.
If you’re ready to build a bond ladder, consider using the online Fidelity Bond Ladder Tool. It walks you step by step through the process and helps you gauge your time horizon, comfort level with risk, and income needs—and identifies choices that fit your criteria from a typical inventory of more than 40,000 bonds and CDs.
- Use our Bond Ladder Tool to create a bond ladder (login required).
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