Skip to Content
Morningstar
Get 14 Days Free
Special Report

Morningstar's Guide to Fixed-Income Investing

Tips, strategies, and picks for better bond investing.

Susan Dziubinski

Evidently bonds are now the cool kids and no longer the wallflowers at the dance.

Despite stubbornly low interest rates, bond funds continue to attract investors: Combined, taxable-bond and municipal-bond funds enjoyed inflows of nearly $427 billion during the past year, dwarfing the flows into other fund types during that same time. 

What's the allure?

For those investors at the precipice of or in retirement, bonds are a must-own. They can add much needed ballast to a portfolio during the drawdown phase. Depending on type, bonds can provide portfolio diversification benefits to those investors far from retirement, too. And they're useful for anyone who's funding a shorter-term goal.

Yet investing in bonds can be confusing. Should you stick with high-quality bonds or dabble in lower-quality fare? Go taxable or tax-free? Long or short? Bonds or bond funds? Or maybe you don't even need bonds at all, but you're not quite sure.

Morningstar's Guide to Fixed-Income Investing is designed to help answer those questions. Here you'll find articles and videos that will empower you to make the best investment decisions about what role bonds should play in your portfolio.

What Role Do Bonds Play in an Era of Ultralow Yields?

Are Bond Funds 'Broken' as Diversifiers?

What Role Do Bonds Play in a Portfolio?

Cash Versus Bond Fund: Which Is Better?

What Type of Bond Funds Do You Need?

How Much of a Portfolio Should Be Invested in Bonds?

Handle These Bond Categories With Care

A Checklist for Taxable-Bond-Fund Investors

The Best Taxable Bond Funds

The Best Municipal Bond Funds

Should You Add Flavor to a Vanilla Bond Portfolio?

Tips for Choosing a TIPS Fund

How Do Interest Rates Affect Your Bonds?  

Short-Term Treasury ETFs Offer Safety, but Not Much Else

Are Dividend-Paying Stocks a Good Substitute for Bonds?

How and Why to Invest in Bonds: A Morningstar View

What Are the Right Bonds for Retirees Today?

What Kind of Bonds Should I Hold?

What Are Municipal Bonds?

Bonds Vs. Bond Funds

 

Transparency is how we protect the integrity of our work and keep empowering investors to achieve their goals and dreams. And we have unwavering standards for how we keep that integrity intact, from our research and data to our policies on content and your personal data.

We’d like to share more about how we work and what drives our day-to-day business.

We sell different types of products and services to both investment professionals and individual investors. These products and services are usually sold through license agreements or subscriptions. Our investment management business generates asset-based fees, which are calculated as a percentage of assets under management. We also sell both admissions and sponsorship packages for our investment conferences and advertising on our websites and newsletters.

How we use your information depends on the product and service that you use and your relationship with us. We may use it to:

  • Verify your identity, personalize the content you receive, or create and administer your account.
  • Provide specific products and services to you, such as portfolio management or data aggregation.
  • Develop and improve features of our offerings.
  • Gear advertisements and other marketing efforts towards your interests.

To learn more about how we handle and protect your data, visit our privacy center.

Maintaining independence and editorial freedom is essential to our mission of empowering investor success. We provide a platform for our authors to report on investments fairly, accurately, and from the investor’s point of view. We also respect individual opinions––they represent the unvarnished thinking of our people and exacting analysis of our research processes. Our authors can publish views that we may or may not agree with, but they show their work, distinguish facts from opinions, and make sure their analysis is clear and in no way misleading or deceptive.

To further protect the integrity of our editorial content, we keep a strict separation between our sales teams and authors to remove any pressure or influence on our analyses and research.

Read our editorial policy to learn more about our process.