Bargain Bond Buys
Online brokerages are offering bonds at low trading costs. Instead of the $50 to $100 per bond trade that brokers once took, Fidelity charges $1 for online bond trades, and TradeKing charges $5. At E*Trade, there's no commission for orders of 10 bonds or more.
Such prices make owning individual bonds a more practical choice, compared with bond funds, where average expenses are 1.24% a year, plus embedded trading costs. In a low-return environment, paying such high costs for a bond fund is hard to justify.
Of course, if you want to own Treasury bonds, they are available with no trading costs at www.treasurydirect.gov.
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Such prices make owning individual bonds a more practical choice, compared with bond funds, where average expenses are 1.24% a year, plus embedded trading costs. In a low-return environment, paying such high costs for a bond fund is hard to justify.
Of course, if you want to own Treasury bonds, they are available with no trading costs at www.treasurydirect.gov.
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posted by Bob Moser at
7:37 PM
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