Vanguard Long-Term Investment-Grade Fund(Ticker: VWESX)
The Vanguard Long-Term Investment-Grade fund aim is to seek a high and sustainable level of current income. The mutual fund uses its assets to purchase a variety of high-quality and medium-quality fixed income securities. It invests mainly in intermediate- and long-term investment-grade bonds. These high-quality fixed incomes are rated A3 or better by Moody’s Investors Service; medium-quality fixed income securities are those rated the equivalent of Baa1, Baa2, or Baa3.
Fund Profile
- Fund Inception Date: July 8, 1973
- Ticker Symbol: VWESX
- CUSIP: 922031109
- Beta (3yr): 2.31
- Rank in category (YTD): 49%
- Category: Long-Term Bond
- Distribution: 4.57%
- Capital Gains: 0%
- Expense Ratio: 0.22%
- Net Assets: $ 13.58 billion
- Number of Years Up: 34 years
- Number of Years Down: 4 years
- Average maturity: 24.5 years
- Average duration: 14.1 years
- Annual Turnover Rate: 29%
Lucius T. Hill III has managed this bond fund since 2008. He is the Senior Vice President of Wellington Management Company, LLP. The fund’s expense ratio is 0.22% per year. This expense fee is lower than the average expense ratio of Long-Term Bond category which is 0.98%. Its total net assets are $ 13.58 billion. This best rated bond fund also has a dividend yield of 4.57%. VWESX fund has no management fee. It is also a no-load fund therefore it doesn’t charge any front-end sales load fee or deferred sales load fee. It has 443 numbers of bonds.
Top Government Bond Mutual Funds 2012
This long term bond mutual fund has 3-stars and Bronze rating from Morningstar. Since its inception, it has recorded 34 years with positive return and 4 years with negative return. The best 1-year total return was recorded in 2011 with 17.18%. The worst performance year occurred in 1999 with -6.23%. It has returned 7.72% over the past 10-yeara and 13.40% over the past one year. This fund is available in other class, which is Vanguard Long-Term Investment-Grade Fund Admiral Shares (VWETX).
The fund’s benchmarks are Barclays US Long Credit A/ Better Bond Index and Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Index. There are around 88 brokerages which offer this Vanguard fund, such as E Trade Financial, T Rowe Price, Schwab Retail, Royal Alliance, Raymond James, Vanguard NTF, etc. You will need $3,000 minimum initial investment to invest in this fund in regular brokerage account. There is no retirement account available.
The distribution by issuer as of August 2012 is Industrial (44.0%), Finance (21.3%), Other (17.8%), Utilities (13.2%), Foreign (1.9%) and Treasury/ Agency (1.8%).
Investing in this mutual fund involves risks. The primary risks are interest rate risk, call risk, credit risk, management risk, etc.
Disclosure: No Position
Other bond funds:
No comments:
Post a Comment