Vanguard Long-Term Bond Index Fund (VBLTX)

Vanguard Long-Term Bond Index Fund (VBLTX) is a taxable bond mutual fund. It invests mainly in long dated bonds with high yield. You can find the fund review from this post below.

Vanguard Long-Term Bond Index Fund (MUTF: VBLTX)

The Vanguard Long-Term Bond Index Fund objective is to track the performance of a market-weighted bond index with a long-term dollar-weighted average maturity. The mutual fund employs an indexing investment approach designed to track the performance of the Barclays Capital U.S. Long Government/Credit Float Adjusted Index. It invests >80% of assets in bonds held in the index. The fund maintains a dollar-weighted average maturity ranges between 15 and 30 years.

Fund Details

Vanguard fund details

• Fund Inception Date: February 28, 1994
• Ticker Symbol: VBLTX
• CUSIP: 921937405
• Beta (3yr): 3.12
• Rank in category (YTD): 95%
• Category: Long-Term Bond
• Distribution: 4.03%
• Capital Gains: 0%
• Expense Ratio: 0.22%
• Net Assets: $ 778.9 million
• Number of Years Up: 16 years
• Number of Years Down: 2 years
• Average Duration: 24.1 years
• Average Maturity: 14.8 years
• Annual Turnover Rate: 45.00%

updated on 5/5/2013

This best Vanguard fund has total net assets of$778.9 million. It has 3-stars rating from Morningstar. The fund is currently managed by Gregory Davis. It also has 4.03% of 12-month dividend yield.  The expense ratio of this fund is 0.22% per year. This expense fee is 77% lower than the average expense ratio of funds with similar holdings.

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Special Barclays US LongGv/Cr Flt Adj lx is the fund’s benchmark. Among the 16 years of the positive returns, the fund has its best 1-year total return in 2011 with 22.05%. The worst was in 1999 with -7.85%. Based on the load adjusted returns, the fund’s performance is as below:

• 1-year: 4.61%
• 3-year: 11.70%
• 5-year: 9.25%
• 10-year: 7.6%

This VBLTX fund can be purchased from 84 brokerages, such as T Rowe Price, EP Fee Small, JP Morgan, Vanguard NTF, Raymond James, Scottrade Load, Fidelity Retail Fundsnetwork, Scwab Retail, etc.  A minimum initial investment of $3,000 is needed for either brokerage or retirement account. This is a no load fund, means it doesn’t charge any management fee or front-end sales load fee.

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According to the fund prospectus, the principal investment risks are interest rate risk, income risk, credit risk, index sampling risk, etc.

Disclosure: No Position