We founded Bondsavvy to empower individual investors and to put them in control of their bond investing portfolios. Owning individual corporate bonds enables investors to lock in yields for a specific time period, something that is not possible with bond funds, bond ETFs, and money market funds such as Vanguard VMFXX. Individual corporate bonds also offer opportunities for capital appreciation, a big focus of our investment strategy.
Our December 12, 2024 Bond Recommendation Updates
Fine tuning bond portfolios is key to maximizing long-term performance. To do this, Bondsavvy updates its bond recommendations quarterly, with each issuing company's latest financials and each recommended bond's updated price, YTM, and credit spread. We supplement these quarterly updates with regular subscriber emails. We presented our last quarterly update December 12, 2024 during The Super Bondcast.
This fixed income blog post reviews the exclusive analysis Bondsavvy subscribers receive during our quarterly Super Bondcast investment webinars and how we put our subscribers in control of their bond investing portfolios.
Why Should I Subscribe to Bondsavvy and See the 65 Bond
Recommendation Updates?
Companies such as Fidelity, E*TRADE, Tradeweb, and others have made bond investing efficient and fair for individual investors. When buying corporate bonds online, individual investors benefit from a competitive market with narrow bid-ask spreads and fast trade execution. Often times, individual investors buying bond investment quantities of two, five, or ten bonds can execute trades at prices near or better than the world's largest bond funds.
We founded Bondsavvy to make bond investing easy and more profitable for individual investors. Individual investors need a way to narrow down the 9,000-bond corporate bond universe to a select number of bonds to hold in their portfolios. Corporate bond ratings are not regularly updated and do not speak to whether a bond is a good investment. They ignore the most basic factors that impact whether a bond is a good investment, including a bond's price, YTM, credit spread, and interest rate risk. "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
Luckily, Bondsavvy has created a list of thoroughly researched recommended bonds to buy that have outperformed the leading bond funds and ETFs. Without Bondsavvy, investors would have to spend hundreds of hours researching and monitoring bond investments.
Bondsavvy updates its corporate bond recommendations after companies report quarterly financial results. During The Super Bondcast, we provide our subscribers in-depth analysis of our issuers' most recent financial performance; updated yields, credit spread, and pricing metrics; and the investment rationale for each recommended bond. After watching The Super Bondcast, Bondsavvy subscribers can decide which of our recommended bonds to buy, hold, or sell.
How Many Bonds Does Bondsavvy Currently Rate Buy?
As of December 12, 2024, Bondsavvy rated 36 bonds 'buy' and 26 as 'hold.' View our corporate bond returns page to see the performance of all previous 133 Bondsavvy investment recommendations.
What Do You Cover During The Super Bondcast Investment Webinar?
We present our bond recommendation updates each quarter during The Super Bondcast, an exclusive subscriber webcast hosted on Zoom. These update presentations include four sections:
- Overarching investment themes and economic conditions
- Bond issuer financial performance updates
- Buy/sell/hold recommendation updates for each bond
- Written reviews of issuer financial performance
We discuss each of these sections -- and provide sample PowerPoint slides -- below:
Section 1: Overarching Investment Themes and Economic Conditions
Before diving into the financial performance of our issuing companies, we need to understand the overall corporate bond investment landscape. We therefore kick off each edition of The Super Bondcast with a brief discussion on recent bond yield trends, Fed action, the economy, and other factors we expect to impact the performance of our corporate bond recommendations.
Figure 1 shows a slide from a previous Super Bondcast, where we discussed how US Treasury yields had been trending, some mixed financial performance of certain issuers, and the regulatory environment that was impacting merger-and-acquisition activity.
Bondsavvy founder and fixed income expert Steve Shaw leads each Super Bondcast investment webinar and provides a voice-over for each presentation slide.
Figure 1: Slide from Previous Super Bondcast on Overarching Investment Themes
Section 2: Bond Issuer Financial Performance Update
After reviewing the overarching bond investment themes, we discuss the recent summary financial performance of our issuing companies. We group the issuing companies across pick dates and then discuss revenue and EBITDA growth, EBITDA margins, and any changes in bond ratings.
While we believe bond rating methodologies are flawed in many ways, changes in bond ratings can impact bond prices. They also provide a third-party opinion on a bond issuer's creditworthiness that is separate from the corporate bond research Bondsavvy provides its subscribers.
As shown in Figure 2, Bondsavvy's corporate bond recommendations include bonds with both investment grade and high yield bond ratings and a range of issuing company sizes. View the Picks at a Glance tab on the Bondsavvy subscription page to learn more about the YTM and maturity-date ranges of our corporate bond recommendations.
Figure 2: Summary Financial Performance Slide from Previous Super Bondcast
The slide represented in Figure 2 covered the financial performance of 12 issuing companies from our November 16, 2022, March 8, 2023, and June 22, 2023 bond pick dates. The one outlier, which showed a drastic drop in Q1 2023 EBITDA, was a pulp manufacturer, Mercer International. Given this company's weak Q1 2023 financial performance, on July 13, 2023, we issued a sell recommendation on the Mercer bond we recommended March 8, 2023.
View our corporate bond returns page to see the performance of previous and current Bondsavvy corporate bond recommendations.
Bondsavvy Subscriber Benefit
Approximately 9,000 individual corporate bonds are available for online investing each day. Our corporate bond recommendations cut through the clutter to identify bonds that offer high coupons and upside potential relative to their risk.Get Started
Section 3: New Buy/Sell/Hold Ratings for Each Bond Recommendation
Our bond recommendations are a big step up from traditional Wall Street fixed income research, as they are at the individual bond, or CUSIP, level. Most corporate bond research is at the issuer level and simply deals with whether an issuer's creditworthiness is getting better or worse.
Our recommendations identify specific bonds we believe are good values and can outperform the leading corporate bond funds and ETFs
Figure 3 shows a slide from a previous Super Bondcast that reviewed key bond price and financial metrics, as well as the updated buy/sell/hold recommendations. We show the financial and bond price metrics on the pick date, as well as the day immediately before The Super Bondcast. This enables us to assess whether a corporate bond is a better or worse value than it was on the pick date and impacts whether a bond is a buy, sell, or hold.
Figure 3: Previous Super Bondcast Bond Pick Updates Slide
Section 4: Brief Written Reviews of Each Bond Issuer
Since The Super Bondcast investment webinar lasts only 60 minutes, we have limited time to spend on each recommendation. In cases when an issuer has reported weak financial results, we will typically spend additional time discussing such issuers at the beginning of The Super Bondcast.
We will typically end the webcast version of The Super Bondcast after Section 3. Then, after we post the recording of The Super Bondcast in the Bondsavvy subscriber area, we will complete written individual summaries for each bond recommendation.
These summaries will include details on an issuing company's financial performance, business trends, capital allocation, and upcoming debt maturities. They will also discuss forward guidance to the extent an issuing company provides it. We include these written financial updates in a PDF version of The Super Bondcast that we post in the Bondsavvy subscriber area.
Bondsavvy Subscriber Benefit
Our investment analysis puts our individual investor subscribers in control of their bond portfolios. We do this at a fraction of the cost of traditional financial advisors.Get Started
Figure 4 shows a sample slide that covered brief written updates on two of our issuing companies:
Figure 4: Individual Company Written Update Sample
Are These Quarterly Updates the only Time Bondsavvy's Picks Are Updated?
No. In addition to providing quarterly bond recommendation updates through The Super Bondcast investment webinar, we also regularly update our recommendations through the Bondsavvy corporate bond investment newsletter. We notify our subscribers of these updates via email and post a PDF of each update in the "Updates" tab of the Bondsavvy subscriber area.
These additional bond updates would cover things such as tender offers, exchange offers, merger-and-acquisition activity, significant changes in a bond price, or any recommendation change that occurs between editions of The Super Bondcast.
How Do I Gain Access to Live Bondsavvy Webinars?
In addition to the quarterly Super Bondcast, Bondsavvy hosts quarterly editions of The Bondcast, where we present new corporate bond recommendations. Read a preview of our best corporate bonds to buy 2024 investment webinar for more information on these subscriber webcasts.
In advance of each Bondsavvy investment webinar, we email Bondsavvy subscribers Zoom details and post the Zoom information in the Bondsavvy subscriber area. Upon subscribing to Bondsavvy, you will gain immediate access to our current corporate bond recommendations and be the first to learn our new bond recommendations and recommendation updates.
Why Did You Found Bondsavvy?
We founded Bondsavvy in April 2017 to empower individual investors to benefit from the income, growth, and principal protection individual corporate bonds can provide. We also seek to put individual investors in control of their bond portfolios.
Bond funds take control away from individual investors and typically offer weak performance. Our easy-to-understand individual bond recommendations take the guesswork out of bond investing and empower our subscribers to make successful corporate bond investments.
