You either might be planning to diversify your portfolio or in the early stages of your financial investment plan. Either way, you might be geared towards your financial goal for a longer run to get flexible and regular returns. You must have reached out to quite a few experts for an opinion since you are fairly new or just muddled with where to begin or diversify. Everybody could have directed you in the same direction of investing in bonds or adding bonds to your portfolio.
Before investing in bonds it is necessary to ask a few fundamental questions and those are as follows.
1. Why would a Company /Government choose to issue bonds over obtaining a bank loan?
Corporate Issues Bonds
Every company needs money to fund expansions, find and create new products, or discover new markets. So why wouldn’t they take a loan from the bank? This would be the easiest option.
Well, this is because companies typically pay bondholders a lower interest rate than what banks are demanding from the corporates. Minimizing interest is crucial because companies are in the business of making money for their shareholders.
The companies can also raise funds through equity (selling the company share if it is a listed company). Since equity does not promise a fixed return to the buyers, it can be risky for the company to issue a share at the time of urgency.
Issuing bonds is one of the preferred options for corporate companies because of bank restrictions and reluctance from equity investors. Example: Banks frequently demand that businesses agree to hold off on issuing new debt or making corporate acquisitions until their debts are fully repaid.
Government Issuing bonds
In general, the government needs a lot of money to manage the nation’s daily operations.
Even when the government receives taxes, this may not be enough to carry out all of the important initiatives for the nation. The government can borrow money from the RBI, but it will be challenging to pay it back on time, which might lead to economic turmoil. In order to meet its financial demands and promote economic growth in the country, the government always issues bonds by borrowing money from the general public.
What is the difference between Corporate and Governments Bonds?
2. Should I invest in mutual funds or corporate bonds?
The main advantage of investing in corporate bonds is that you can easily match the maturity of the bond to your time horizon. Even though interest rates may have gone up, down, or sideways during the course of your holding period, if you purchased a bond from a reputable issuer, you will receive your coupon payments and get your principal back when the bond matures. You could theoretically cherry-pick the corporate bonds that give the best return and safety ratio and purchase them. As an individual bond buyer, you can avoid fund-management fees as well, but there may be additional expenses. So, such cost savings might just be a mirage. Corporate bonds also have risks involved like any other instruments.
3. What benefit do I receive if I invest in corporate bonds?
For the whole life of the bond, you will get regular interest payments known as a coupon, which are paid monthly, quarterly , half yearly or annually The company is required to return your money at the conclusion of the bond’s predetermined duration.
4. What rate of interest will a bond pay me?
There are several variables that affect the interest rate. Strong effects are influenced by the bond’s tenure. Investors are rewarded for lending their money out for longer periods of time, since, in general, the interest rate proportionately increases with the length of the duration. Interest rates will also be impacted by the caliber of the business.
Rating organizations like CRISIL, ICRA, and CARE will analyze the bond’s quality to assist investors in determining the danger of a company failing. According to its own scale, CRISIL, for instance, will assign a bond with a rating between “AAA” (highest standard – least likely to default) and “D” (junk – more likely to default).
High-yield bonds are those that offer higher interest rates, as well as the funds that invest in them.
5. Are there any additional advantages for me as a bondholder?
An important advantage of owning bonds as a creditor of the company is that you would rank better among investors in terms of receiving your money back in the event that the business failed. In contrast, shareholders are among the last to receive any payout because they are owners rather than lenders. In reality, shareholders very rarely get anything in bankruptcy.
6. Why should I consider investing in corporate bonds instead of company stock?
One reason is that interest payments are frequently fixed and provide a large contribution to the bond’s overall return. The other is that bonds tend to provide a smoother ride. Shares’ superior long-term returns over the past two decades conceal their inconsistent (volatile) performance.
For instance, shares were down 40.3% from 2007 levels to 2008, at the height of the global financial crisis, as investors liquidated their holdings out of fear of the world economy imploding. After those worries subsided, they increased by 30.8% a year later on. Corporate bonds only lost 4.7% and increased 16.3% throughout the same time period(2007 to 2008).
Diversification could be a valid reason for owning bonds in addition to stocks. On occasion, share values decline when bond prices rise in a market and vice versa. The relative stability of corporate bonds may contribute to portfolio balancing and smoothing out years when markets are more volatile, however, there is never any guarantee of this.
Is My Investment Safe With Bonds?
7. What benefits might bonds have for diversifying a portfolio?
If you depend on reasonably constant, continuous payments or are planning for future expenses, you can build your investment strategy around the interest payment from your various investment instrument.
Due to their propensity to increase when stocks decrease and vice versa, bonds are a crucial component of a balanced portfolio. The fixed-income investments in a portfolio can aid in reducing returns during periods of turbulence. However, with consumer prices rising and inflation, equities and bonds are both down at the halfway point in 2022. Bond prices have begun to stabilize as investors start to factor in future slowing economic growth.
8. Will the coupon rate increase or decrease if the market fluctuates?
The coupon rate is based on how the bond is priced in the current market. It is vis – a –vis. The price of the bond increases when a coupon is greater than the current interest rate; when a coupon is lower, the price of the bond decreases. Most bonds include fixed coupon rates that don’t fluctuate with the national interest rate or the state of the economy. These reflections will be implemented in the new issuance, and not in the already issued bonds.
Example: If ABC investor holds bond Rs. 1000 from XZY Company with a coupon rate of 5%,10-year tenure. After two years of tenure – the same bond is sold at a discounted price of Rs.900 with an 8% Coupon rate for a 10-year tenure.
Will the ABC bond coupon rate go up? Absolutely no, it will remain constant till maturity. It is not possible to upgrade the bond, instead, the investor has to sell at a discounted price and buy a new issue with a loss.
9. Can I trust the bond issuers and facilitators?
You need to analyze the bond issuers based on the following categories:
- Previous bond issue history
- Bond buyer’s payment dispatch history
- Last 5 years’ financial performance
- Crediting whether it has fluctuated over the years.
- Market scalability for the issuer business.
Analysis on the bond facilitators or aggregators:
- Is the company registered?
- Are they allowed to facilitate bonds for the customers?
- Check on their customer base.
- Customer engagement or response time
- Receive feedback from current and previous users.
