FSHBX

awohio1

If you don't think you will be withdrawing it before 6 months, a 6 month CD is about as easy as you can get. Fidelity has a variety of 6 month CDs earning 4.3%. To get 5% rates, you need to have a longer term than 6 months. 2 year CDs earn about 5%. Treasuries need to have a 5 year maturity before you get up into 5%. A short term bond fund like FSHBX shouldn't have much volatility, and it is currently yielding 4.75%. FXNAX and FTBFX are total bond market funds and include longer term bonds which do have more volatility.

greytoc

That's because VBTLX is not a short term bond fund. It's an intermediate term fund with average maturity of over 8 years - with a current yield to maturity of 4.7%. FSHBX is a 1-2 year bond fund. It has a 1 year pre-tax return of 6.75% as-of 10/31/2024. And the 30 day yield is 4.49%.

samenumberwhodis

I parked around $5k in VBTLX in January and it's still worth just $5k. Fidelity short term bond fund FSHBX has done 1.8% over the past year. If you want to safely park money, put it in a high yield savings account (HYSA) and get around 4-5% annually.

StatisticalMan

The statement is so vague it is hard to say for sure but no this isn't something esoteric or only to those with massive balances. Understand though the yield on short term debt is very low. It isn't anything which is going to make you rich it is more I don't k now what to do with this funds so stick it here better than getting nothing. If by BOND he litterally meant actual bonds as opposed to bills then he likely was talking about something like this FSHBX https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/summary/316146208 10 year annnualized yield is about 1.8% Some people however will use bond to mean anything down to overnight paper so he could have just been talking about a money market fund like SPAXX https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/summary/31617H102 10 year annnualized yield is about 1.4% Note that one alternative to this "I don't know what the fuck to do so stick it into a bond fund" is not pay for a high priced advisor who will try to beat the market, fail, and charge you a fortune. Then you could just put your entire equity allocation into an index fund (i.e VTI).

throwaway9gk0k4k569

There are plenty of bond ETFs and mutual funds. I recently did some research on Fidelity products because I was exiting another Fidelity product. FTBFX - Fidelity Total Bond Fund -- Mostly US Treasury notes, bonds, and cash FSHBX - Fidelity Short-Term Bond -- Mostly US Treasury notes, bonds, cash, and some other misc bonds/notes short-term FTABX - Fidelity Tax-Free Bond -- Municipal bonds I don't know squat about bonds. I'll let the fund managers figure it out for me.

nostratic

FAGIX is an oddball fund, ~80% high-yield bonds and the rest in stocks. it's more volatile than something like FSHBX, a short-term bond fund, it's good for what it is. semi-conductors are too trendy for me, and past returns don't necessarily tell you anything about future returns. that particular fund has a p/e ratio of ~25, which is a bit too highly valued for me. the top holding is 27% of Nvidia!!!, which is crazy level of concentration and Nvidia is already a top holding in the total market index. https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/composition/316390863?type=o-NavBar that fund has also been highly volatile, it dropped 50% in 2002 and again in 2008. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/FSELX/performance?p=FSELX also, 4% of a portfolio will not have much impact.