Municipal Bond Forum
‘Total return’
Q
In your article, “A Disappointing Year for Doomsayers,” you say, “Further confounding the self-anointed seers, municipal bonds have returned 10.10% year-to-date, even outstripping the broad U.S. Treasury index, which delivered a robust 9.95%.” Don’t you mean that the increase in return was 10.10% for munis?
A
James A. Klotz responds:
When analysts compute the yearly performance of an investment, they measure “total return.”
This calculation includes interest earned as well as appreciation in market price, year over year.
As a client of FMSbonds, you can see from your own portfolio that when you observe the prior appreciation of your holdings, your annual total return greatly exceeded the interest you received.
Because we believe in buying and holding long-term bonds and understand that sometimes our bonds will be worth more than we paid for them and sometimes less, this total return figure is merely a conversation piece.
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