Comments on: A Tour of ETFs: iShares Bond ETFs (XSB, XBB)

By: My Own Advisor » My new rock steady bond

My Own Advisor » My new rock steady bond — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 16:00:25 +0000

[...] Canadian Capitalist – XBB and XSB. [...]

By: Lech

Lech — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:59:32 +0000

I think that you have it wrong when you say that “The duration of the two bond funds indicate that the XBB will experience a decrease of approx. 6.49% when interest rates rise by 1% and… “.

The way I understand duration is that it is more like a time period where you breakeven on the investment through cashflow from coupons and bond maturities. The sensitivity you are talking about would be more like a beta coefficient.

Anybody know better, please correct me.

Otherwise, I agree with your conclusions.

By: Switching from Index Mutual Funds to ETFs

Switching from Index Mutual Funds to ETFs — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:00:11 +0000

[...] iShares CDN Bond Index (TSX: XBB) [...]

By: Claymore 1-5 Yr Laddered Government Bond ETF

Claymore 1-5 Yr Laddered Government Bond ETF — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 12:46:45 +0000

[...] Government Bond ETF (ticker symbol: CLF) is more interesting because it competes directly with the iShares CDN Short Bond ETF. As the name suggests, the ETF holds equal amounts of provincial, federal and agency bonds maturing [...]

By: My Portfolio – Asset Allocation for Fixed Income | Quest For Four Pillars

My Portfolio – Asset Allocation for Fixed Income | Quest For Four Pillars — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 02:34:03 +0000

[...] high enough so if anyone has any thoughts then feel free to let me know. According to Bernstein and this from Canadian Capitalist, long term bonds are not worth owning because they don’t give a return [...]

By: harry toulch

harry toulch — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 18:12:31 +0000

Is there an etf that shorts bonds.An inverse stock such as dxd that is a stock for shorting the dow.

By: Short-Term versus Long-Term Bonds

Short-Term versus Long-Term Bonds — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 11:24:48 +0000

[...] While the fixed income portion of the Sleepy Portfolio is devoted to a medium-term bond fund (TSX:XBB – iShares CDN Bond Index Fund), in our personal portfolios, I use short-term bonds (XSB – iShares CDN Short Bond Index Fund) [...]

By: Financial Jungle - » Jungle Bullentin: Around The Blogosphere

Financial Jungle - » Jungle Bullentin: Around The Blogosphere — Fri, 18 May 2007 16:48:36 +0000

[...] Capitalist reviews the two bond ETFs offered by iShares: iShares CDN Bond Index Fund (XBB) and iShares CDN Short Bond Index Fund (XSB). [...]

By: Canadian Capitalist

Canadian Capitalist — Tue, 15 May 2007 15:13:37 +0000

True, but iShares will probably get even better pricing due to the size of its bond portfolio. Would it make up for the 0.30% MER? I don’t know because bond pricing is hardly transparent. I do know that just to build a ladder of 5-year Canada’s, I need an outlay of $25K, which means I need a portfolio of $125K (20% is my bond allocation). And that’s for every portfolio I have. I don’t know where the cut-off point is, where investing in individual bonds is better, but it is pretty high. Thoughts?

By: outroupistache

outroupistache — Tue, 15 May 2007 14:39:12 +0000

Re cost of direct bond purchases for small investors…. Just did a small experiment on my discount broker. The min purchase for any individual bond is $5k. For the GTAA 5% 01JUN15 bond, here are the comparable yields on a purchase – quotes taken within a couple of minutes so there may be some change due to price changes during the time I requested the various quotes but it should be pretty close.
$5k – annual yield 4.647%
$10k – 4.702%
$50k – 4.738%
$100k – 4.753%
Thus, the maximum yield difference between the smallest investor and a quite large investor is about 0.1%. That compares well with the 0.3% MER one loses in a bond fund such as XBB.