Bond Ladder: Benefits, examples & more

The difference between an investor who turns a profit and an investor who doesn’t is a good strategy. You might sometimes get lucky, but you should not depend on luck when investing. You must carefully balance portfolio diversification and risk management to make it in the investing world.

Several strategies can help you earn good returns on your investment, and in this article, I will discuss the bond ladder.

Overview

Bond laddering is a fixed-income strategy involving investors distributing their assets across many bonds with varying maturities.

A bond ladder is a tactic investors use to manage cash flows while reducing the risks connected to fixed-income instruments. 

Investors may benefit from reduced investment risk and flexibility when using bond ladders, but they may still suffer from credit risk, interest-rate risk, and default risk. 

When building a bond ladder you must consider the ladder height, number of steps, space between each step, and how to diversify your bond holdings. 

Having sufficient funds for your ladder, avoiding callable bonds, avoiding early redemption, and seeking out high-quality bonds are all crucial.

What is a bond ladder?

The bond ladder is founded on a comparatively straightforward idea that many experts and investors do not comprehend and often overlook. It is a multi-maturity investing method that diversifies bond holdings in a portfolio.

A collection of separate CDs or bonds with varying maturities is called a bond ladder. The goal of this technique is to minimize exposure to interest rate changes while generating current income. You acquire CDs or bonds that mature at different times in the future rather than bonds that are supposed to mature in the same year

Benefits of bond ladder

A bond ladder is a great investment strategy when used well. Let’s explore some of the benefits of using a bond ladder:

1. It aids in money management

A bond ladder ensures a consistent flow of funds throughout the year and for several years. Investors may plan for consistent monthly bond income based on coupon payments with varying maturity.  

2. It reduces investment risk

The inability to insulate oneself from bullish and bearish bond markets is a major drawback of long-term bond lockups. You wouldn’t be able to profit from rising or falling interest rates if you put all your investment into a single bond with a 2% yield over 5 years.

For instance, even if you wanted to purchase another bond, your capital would be trapped with a relatively low interest rate if interest rates fell for five years—at maturity—after you bought the bond.

When you employ a bond ladder strategy, you won’t be stuck with a single bond for a long time since the maturity dates are spaced apart.  

Because certain bonds mature annually, quarterly, or monthly, depending on the number of rungs in the ladder, a ladder helps mitigate the impact of interest rate swings. An investor may choose to reinvest the principal in a new, longer-term bond at the bottom of a ladder once a bond expires.

They will profit from a new, higher interest rate and maintain the ladder if interest rates have increased. The bonds at the bottom of the ladder will probably have locked in higher returns already, but regrettably, the aging bonds would probably be reinvested at lower rates if interest rates dropped.

3. Flexibility 

The flexibility to modify cash flows in accordance with investors’ financial circumstances is another benefit of using a bond ladder.

You may choose laddered bonds with varying coupon dates to provide a monthly income depending on the coupon payments. For retirees, who rely on the cash flows from assets as a source of income, this is especially crucial.

Bonds that mature slowly will provide you access to reasonably liquid funds even if you are not reliant on their income. You will have a reliable stream of money to spend as required in the event of an unforeseen expenditure or job loss.

Risks involved

Here are some risks you should know of;

1. Interest-rate risk

Interest rates and bond prices are inversely correlated; that is, bond prices decrease as interest rates increase. Therefore, you would be forced to keep receiving the lower interest rate of 3% until the bond expires if interest rates on 10-year bonds increased from 3% to 5% while you were holding the bond.

Selling this bond to another investor on the secondary market would be an option, but other investors won’t be prepared to buy a bond with a 3% interest rate when they could buy a new bond with a higher 5% rate. As a result, unless you wait until the bond matures, you would most likely have to sell it at a discount, making it unlikely that you would get your primary investment back.

2. Credit risk

Buying bonds always carries some risk. Credit risk is one of the most important risk considerations for bond investors. Bond-issuing organizations are required to submit to a credit rating agency evaluation.

After carefully examining each institution’s financial situation, these organizations provide a grade that indicates the likelihood that the institution will be able to pay its debts to bondholders.

AAA, or “triple-A,” is the highest rating these agencies provide. Ratings may go all the way down to D, which indicates a significant danger of an institution defaulting on its bondholder obligations. Bond ratings fall into two categories, investment grade, and noninvestment grade, which lie in the middle of these two extremes.

While noninvestment-grade bonds are riskier, investment-grade bonds are often in sound financial standing and have a low default risk. Noninvestment-grade bonds often provide higher interest rates to offset the increased risk to investors because of the greater risk involved.

3. Default risk

When you invest, there is always a chance that a bind issuer could default in payment. This is especially devastating if you employ a bond ladder as it could disrupt your ladder. 

How to create a bond ladder

Creating a bond ladder is quite easy. All you need to do is picture a real ladder in your mind. You need to think of the length of the ladder, how many steps the ladder would have, and the space between each step. Let’s look at each of those in detail:

1. The length of the ladder

This is how long it will take for all of your bonds to reach maturity. This is determined by the number of steps you have in the ladder and the space between them. Usually, you wouldn’t consider this too much at the beginning since you want to keep extending the length of the ladder.

The initial length maybe five years or ten years, or as many years as you may want it, but the length may change over time as you keep adding more bonds or removing them as you like. 

2. The number of steps

The number of bonds for this portfolio, or the number of steps on your ladder, may be calculated by taking the whole amount of money you want to invest and dividing it evenly by the total number of years you want a ladder.

Your portfolio will be more diversified and you will be more protected against any one firm failing on bond payments if there are more steps.

3. The distance between each step

The time interval between the bonds’ various maturities—which may vary from months to years, determines the separation between steps. The spacing should generally be about equal.

While shorter bond maturities often lower income and interest rate risk, longer-term bonds typically give greater yields.

4. Materials 

In the same way, ladders can be made of different materials like wood, metal, plastic, and other materials. Bond ladders may be constructed from a variety of materials, much like actual ladders.

However, while it is only feasible to use one type of material when constructing a ladder, you want your bond ladder to be made up of various materials. In the case of bond ladders, the materials are the type of bond and stock that make up the ladder.

Purchasing stock in several businesses is a simple way to lower risk exposure. You want to diversify your portfolio as much as possible to minimize risk. 

Example of a bond ladder

It may be hard to picture how a bond ladder works with just an explanation, so let me provide an example to make things clearer. 

Let’s say you have N5,000,000 to invest, instead of investing the money in a single or multiple bonds that will mature around the same time, you split the money equally and invest it in five different bonds that mature every year for five years. Let’s name those them Bond A-E. 

Starting with Bond A, a one-year bond with a 1% yield rate, you bought five bonds that mature one year apart. Bond E, a five-year bond, has a coupon rate of 3.5% since, generally speaking, coupon rates are greater for bonds with longer maturity dates. Each bond would signify a step in the ladder, the bottom stem would signify the bond with the shortest maturity, while the highest step would signify the bond with the longest maturity. In our example, step 1 would be bond A which would mature in one year, step 2 would be bond B which would mature in 2 years, and so on. 

In one year, Bond A would have matured and you would receive your N1,000,000 principal back. You can choose to re-ladder and utilize the funds from Bond A to buy Bond F, which has five years to maturity, as interest rates on five-year bonds have increased to 4%. Every year as the next bond expires, you have the option to either retain the funds or reinvest them in a new five-year bond. This way, you can extend your ladder indefinitely. 

The aforementioned scenario begs the question, “Why not just put all N5,000,000 into a five-year bond to get more interest in year one if you can get 3.5% for a five-year bond and only 1% for a one-year bond?” This relates to interest rate risk and liquidity. Unless you sell the bond on the secondary market, you will be locked up for five years if you put all your N5,000,000 in a five-year bond. Selling the bond might result in a loss on your investment, depending on changes in interest rates. In this case, you were able to benefit from the higher interest rate of 4% over five years when you bought Bond F by laddering the bonds.

Conversely, suppose that five-year bond interest rates have dropped to 1%. In this scenario, you may choose to invest in something else that could provide a larger return or retain the cash when Bond A matures.

Tips for Success

Bond laddering is a powerful method to turn in great returns on your investment. However, it will only work when used properly. 

1. Have adequate capital

It has been suggested that if investors lack the funds to completely diversify their portfolio by purchasing both stocks and bonds, they shouldn’t try a bond ladder. Typically, starting a ladder with at least five rungs requires a lot of money in funding.

You should have enough money to diversify your assets since better-yielding bonds often have bigger denominations.

2. Diversify your holdings

To reduce risk exposure, increase emergency fund accessibility, and take advantage of constantly shifting market circumstances, make sure all your eggs are not in one basket. Diversify your holdings to not only include bonds from different companies, but across various industries as well. 

3. Avoid callable bonds

Investment instruments known as callable bonds are ones in which the issuer may redeem them before they mature, in which case interest payments would cease.

Callable bonds may have interest payments halted before they mature, therefore bond ladders don’t function well with them.

4. Have patience 

Even when you’re in need, have patience. The temptation to cash in your bonds before they mature should be avoided. This kind of technique is particularly useless if you plan to redeem your bonds early. Additionally, this increases the space between rungs.

If you cash out any of the assets in your bond ladder plan too soon, you can also be putting yourself in a situation where you’re taking on more risk, including the chance of loss or a decline in returns.

5. Invest in superior assets

Search for superior assets to add to your bond ladder. You should keep an eye out for bonds that have an A-grade or better rating. For long-term investors, several of them provide excellent income potential, particularly if they use bond ladder-style tactics.

6. Avoid high-risk bonds

Generally speaking, investment-grade bonds are preferable building blocks for a bond ladder. If you use high-risk bonds and one of them fails, your fixed-income strategy will be disrupted and you will lose a rung on your ladder.

Conclusion 

Bond ladders are a great technique to increase your earnings over time when used. If used wrongly, you could end up with a messy portfolio. As such, it is important you completely understand how they work before you start to use them.