Build America Bonds in corporate bond funds

Dec 10, 2009 1 Replies

Build America Bonds (BAB) are a relatively new type of municpal bond that pay interest that is fully taxable to the investor but which is subsidized on the issuer side by the federal government. An investor interested in taxable bonds (either because he is in a low tax bracket or because he has a tax-deferred account) ought to consider BABs.



Are there are corporate/government taxable bond funds that also invest in BABs? There exist one or two BAB mutual funds and ETFs, but I'd prefer that a taxable bond manager choose the weights in Treasuries, agency bonds, corporate bonds, and BABs.



My apologies if I am telling you something you already know. Bond funds are not bonds. If you buy a bond you can hold it to maturity and be sure of recovering your principal, assuming the the issuer does not become insolvent. If you buy a bond fund with a duration of five years and interest rates go up one percent you will suffer a 5% captial loss as the price of the fund shares drops by 5%. Interest rates are currently very low so there is a high probability that they will rise over the next several years.

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