Wellington and Wellesley Interest Rate Risk

[invhelpme]

I was wondering if anyone out there who owns Wellington and/or Wellesley are worried about what rising interest rates will do to these funds since the average duration of the bonds is 6.4 yrs? I have my Roth in Taylor's 3 fund index portfolio but my wife's is 50% Wellington and 50% Wellesley. This gives her about a 50%stock/50%bond portfolio (Wellington -65%stock/Wellesley -35%stock). This is about the allocation we want: 50% stock/ 50%bond portfolio. Should I deviate from my original plan of buying and holding both of these funds until retirement or should I switch to Total Stock Market index and maybe the Short-Term Investment grade Bond Fund? The reason I may not choose Total Bond Market(5.2 yr duration) or Intermediate Bond Fund Index(6.5 yr. duration) is because these funds will probably get hammered worse than the short term bond fund if and when interest rates rise. I have read most of the reccommended books by Bogleheads and then some and am a believer of index funds, but have a hard time getting over the Morningstar Performance Charts for Wellington and Wellesley. I know I shouldn't have any active-managed funds. What should I do?

Thank you all for the help in advance.

[RyeWhiskey]

Wellesley and Wellington are both amazing funds and highly regarded for good reason. Owning them both does provide quite a bit of overlap however.

As to the fear of interest rates rising, no one can predict the future. If your IPS calls for owning them both then you should continue to do so. Remember that as rates rise and the NAV falls, the funds can reinvest in the new rates, thereby bringing in a higher return later on. Everything in perspective.

[Rob5TCP]

If (when) interest rates rise; Wellington will be adversely affected. Wellington has a duration of 6.4 years, so normally for each 1% increase in the interest rate,
the fund should decrease approximately 6.4%. However, Wellington is about 34% bonds, so the next affect is 2.176 (6.4%*.34). So, even a 2% rise would mean
a 4.2% decrease in the value of Wellington.

[Grt2bOutdoors]

I can not tell you what to do. However, I can offer this - rates usually do not move in 1% increments up or down, it is possible, but is it probable? Let's say your time horizon is ten years - now lets also assume you will reinvest distributions, if the duration is 6 and rates increase you may experience up to a 6% decline in the bond portion of the net asset value. Since Wellington is roughly 35% bonds and let's also assume that all the bonds move in lock-step with rate changes, the maximum impact would be roughly a 2% decline in NAV if the equities hold firm. Also, if you continue to reinvest in the fund you will recoup any decline over the next 5 or so years. But wait, let's make this more difficult and say rates will rise 2% over time - again, given that your horizon is say ten years - you will still be able to recoup nearly all of it in the form of a higher yield. Permanance of capital destruction would only occur if you sell at the most inopportune of times (frequent trading/market timing) or the bond issuers all become insolvent at the same time. Again, it's possible, but how realistic is that? IMO, equity risks are much higher than high quality investment grade bonds.

It's important to understand what you own, the reason why and then to stay the course - your current line of thinking is akin to shifting course based on the fear of the unknown. In that case, you may want to revisit your exposure to both fixed income and equity especially since both of those funds own both asset classes.

[Grt2bOutdoors]

If (when) interest rates rise; Wellington will be adversely affected. Wellington has a duration of 6.4 years, so normally for each 1% increase in the interest rate,
the fund should decrease approximately 6.4%. However, Wellington is about 34% bonds, so the next affect is 2.176 (6.4%*.34). So, even a 2% rise would mean
a 4.2% decrease in the value of Wellington.

You beat me to it. But all interest rate increases do not necessarily correspond to an equal reaction in the valuation of the securities, some may be impacted more severely due to company specific issues or less if the perceived value is higher due to demand, etc.

[invhelpme]

Thanks for the help. I like these two funds because of the wrong reason -past performance. It is so difficult to get past that. I fear because of the Bogle "reversion to the mean" that these two active-managed funds may have subpar returns for a few years. I could be more diversified if I switched to the 3 or 4 fund index portfolio reccomended by Bogleheads as well. I hate to change my IPO though. What to do.......

[Timcom99]

Question: I hate to change my IPO though. What to do.......

Answer: If you feel comfortable with two of Vanguards "Sleep Well At Night" funds Wellington And Wellesley simply Stay The Course. Your ROTH account with the 3 index funds provides plenty diversification. Wellington and Wellesley for the long term will most likely continue to do well for you as they have done for many generations before.

[Rob5TCP]

While Wellington had a couple of bad years (comparatively), in the past 10 years, overall it's good record extends decades. Most of my equities are index funds, with Wellington being the major exception.

[invhelpme]

Thank you all for your replies. Even though these two funds overlap some on the equites side I like that you can get a 50%stock/50bond ratio by owning equal amounts of each fund. I will probably stick with my original IPS and buy and hold these funds through DCAveraging. Again thanks to all help me with my dillema and keep the replies coming if you wish.

[Grt2bOutdoors]

Thanks for the help. I like these two funds because of the wrong reason -past performance. It is so difficult to get past that. I fear because of the Bogle "reversion to the mean" that these two active-managed funds may have subpar returns for a few years. I could be more diversified if I switched to the 3 or 4 fund index portfolio reccomended by Bogleheads as well. I hate to change my IPO though. What to do.......

Twenty years ago (now a lot has happened over the last 20 years wouldn't you say?) a fellow stopped in where I was employed and decided to let me in on a secret. The secret was to put $5 or $10 a week away - then into an investment called the Vanguard Wellington. I didn't do it because I used other mutual funds to meet my objectives, but the point is if you want a steady eddy fund where you can sleep at night, that would be one of the places - it has literally stood the test of time since 1929 (how many interest rate increases/decreases do you think the fund has seen?). If you can do the research it'd be interesting to see what happened during the Paul Volcker years when interest rates when into the teens 13%+, and yet the fund didn't fold, has even more assets and continues to plug along.

[invhelpme]

Thanks again Grt2bO. My wife and I are both about 50 and I like Bogle's "age in bonds". You are correct. Owning these slow and steady funds does allow us to sleep better at night!

[rj49]

If you're 50 then you should be able to reinvest dividends, which will be higher after interest rates increases, and eventually you could actually come out ahead by investing in longer-term bonds. Vanguard once wrote a good paper about interest rates increases and their impact on bonds, and they showed, I believe, that intermediate-term bonds that had dividends reinvested actually came out ahead over shorter-term bonds.

Wellesley/Wellington are managed, though, so what happens to your bonds is largely up to them and how they respond to interest rate changes. They've obviously been longer in maturity and emphasized higher-yield corporate bonds to please yield-hungry investors, but they also buy some Treasuries when they think the economy will do badly. You'll also see they have some foreign bonds, including some from Canadian banks, so you can view that as greater diversification over TBM or greater risk. The silver lining in any hits to Wellesley/Wellington is that you would get a much higher yield when it came time to take distributions, more along its historical 5-7%. But if and when interest rates rise and all the fair-weather yield investors decide they can't handle sinking bond values and jump ship, then you'll have to decide whether Wellesley/Wellington are still worth it when they're fighting interest rate headwinds and negative returns for their bond portions.It was easy for their managers and for people like Bill Gross to look like investing geniuses over the past 40 years, but the coming decades will see if it was just using the tailwinds of falling interest rates to their advantage and the ballast of bonds during a couple of scary stock crashes.

[investor]

One of the Advantages of the Wellington and Wellesley funds is that they are actively managed. They are free to change the bond portfolio as they seem appropriate to meet changing market interest rates.The following is from the prospectus of the Wellington fund. Their respective ER's are competitive to the index funds. So Low Cost and Good Management and Good track record (Lucky record, if you like to view it that way).
Bonds
Wellington Management selects investment-grade bonds that it believes will generate
a reasonable level of current income. These may include short-, intermediate-, and
long-term corporate, U.S. Treasury, government agency, and asset-backed bonds, as
well as mortgage-backed securities. The advisor does not generally make large
adjustments in the average maturity of the Fund’s bond holdings in anticipation of
changes in interest rates. Although the Fund does not have specific maturity
guidelines, the average duration of the Fund’s bond portfolio as of November 30, 2011,
was 5.9 years.
[/color]

Investor

[Levett]

Wellington and Wellesley are designed for very, very long-term shareholders who have space in tax-deferred accounts.

One shouldn't own the funds if you are regularly second-guessing management or the markets.

There's nothing any of us have to teach management that they don't already know. Wellington Management has a long institutional memory.

For me, it's just that simple.

Lev

[scone]

Maybe I shouldn't say this, but I have more confidence in Wellington and Wellesley than any other investment I own. And I'm not alone in that. Think of it this way-- if you want stability, income and the sleep-at-night factor, where are you going to get it? You could do far worse than "value" blue chips and quality corporate bonds. That said, if the duration of the bonds worries you, take a look at a short corporate bond fund to balance out the W & W bonds. Vanguard has an indexed one, VCSH:

https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/ ... IntExt=INT

[SpringMan]

The stock portion of Wellington/Wellesley can be approximated with Vanguard's Equity Income fund and the bond portion with Vanguard's Intermediate Investment Grade fund. If the duration of the bond portion does not suit one, one could use Vanguard's Equity Income fund with a shorter duration bond fund. I have thought about doing this but have taken no action so far.

[325e]

Picking a fund because of past performance is not a bad thing. The problem is when "past performance" is only a few years, then its not really past performance, it is recent performance and you get a reversion to the mean (the real past performance). However, the mean for Wellington and Wellesley over 80 years is high.

Buffett: "In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield."

This is one of those things that can be confusing. Past performance is actually more accurate. Housing over 100 years generally kept up with inflation. But then it ran up for 10 years and people thought it was going to keep going. But the real past says that it generally only keeps up with inflation, and then it will revert to what it normally does over longer periods of time.

Point being again, past performance is an ok reference if your time horizon is sufficiently long.

[bertilak]

The stock portion of Wellington/Wellesley can be approximated with Vanguard's Equity Income fund and the bond portion with Vanguard's Intermediate Investment Grade fund. If the duration of the bond portion does not suit one, one could use Vanguard's Equity Income fund with a shorter duration bond fund. I have thought about doing this but have taken no action so far.

I decided on Wellington (a while back) after thinking about what you say here.

I decided that if I was going to start picking and choosing, I might as well let the Wellington Management Company do it for me. I'm sure they are better at it than I am. Of course there is a cost: an ER a bit higher than the sum of individual Vanguard funds -- but not much higher. It cost me 0.07% to have Wellington manage my investments. (My ER went from 0.12% to 0.19%.) That's hard to beat as a management fee.

BUT, my primary reason for moving it all to Wellington was simplicity. I was personally happy with my carefully constructed AA consisting of six different funds but realized it was just to complicated for my beneficiary to deal with. For that matter, too difficult for anyone who wasn't intimately involved in putting it together. I realized this when I tried to put together a set of instructions for my beneficiary.

If I was a lot younger I might have continued do it all myself and keep that 0.07%

[texasdiver]

My wife is 100% in Wellington in one of her retirement accounts mainly because it is the lowest cost option among a suite of higher priced actively managed funds. Wellington basically provides a portion of our large domestic equities and our bond allocation and we use index funds in other accounts to basically balance it out. I don't have any intention of selling it as there is nothing better to put it in. It's money she isn't going to look at for 25 years anyway.

My advice is look to your desired asset allocation. If your AA says 30% bonds then Wellington is as good of a place as any to get some of those bonds. If you are just sour on bonds in general (and not Wellington in specific) then you are really talking about market timing and not long term investment according to a well thought out plan and asset allocation. I expect that the Wellington management team is far more aware of this sort of thing than anyone on this list and given their track record, they seem to know what they are doing over the long term.

[Sheepdog]

Past does not equate to the future, I know, but this is worth telling. In 1994, a year with a major bond market collapse, the 30 year treasury interest rate increased 150 basis points. That year, Wellesley lost 4.4%. The rally in 1995, however, yielded a +29% total return for the fund....quite a turnaround. Many sold then and look at their probable losses because they missed the runup. (1999 also had a bond market drop causing a 4.1% drop in Wellesley. That recovered soon after.)

Wellesley did far worse in 2008 with the stock market drop that year to cause a loss of 10.3% in the fund . It also recovered. In the last 32 years, there have only been 4 years with losses with Wellesley. The 4th one not listed here was in 1987 due to bonds with a 1.9% loss. A history worth remembering.

I have a high percentage of my investments in Wellesley (my largest investment) and Target Income, from which I get my retirement income. I didn't run away then and won't now. Realize that a bond market collapse has been "predicted" for 3 years and hasn't occurred. I know many dropped out then and have lost out..
Jim

[Hexdump]

I have just finished converting all our holdings to 100% Wellesley for all of the above reasons.
Simplicity for my heir, decent income, the AA fits our requirement, and it has stood the test of time.
I too had a 4 fund portfolio with a somewhat smaller ER but it took some attention to detail to keep it according to plan. A level of attention that my heir is not interested in providing.

[Islander]

It's nice to see Wellington and Wellesley receiving the acclaim they deserve.

[Default User BR]

It's nice to see Wellington and Wellesley receiving the acclaim they deserve.

I once said on the forum that these funds get a pass on the "active funds don't add value" standard Bogleheads mantra. I was informed that such wasn't the case. I laugh.


Brian

[bertilak]

If I was a lot younger I might have continued do it all myself and keep that 0.07%

A thought: When I was a lot younger I had no idea what I was doing so wouldhave been better in Wellington anyway!

[invhelpme]

Thanks to all the replies. My wife's 50% Wellington/50%Wellesley are in tax-deferred Roth IRA. This really helps us with our decision about these two funds. I like the one comment about VG Equity Income and Short Term Bond fund to decrease the bond duration. We will own Wellington and Wellesley for the long term until we need to withdraw for retirement.

I do feel like kind of a hypocrite though. 80% of our retirement funds are VG index funds so holding 20% of these two active funds makes me feel like a hypocrite.
These two active-managed funds however do have low ER's so that makes me feel better.

[investor]

Equity Income and the equity portion of Wellesley are managed by the same lead manager..

investor.

[learning_head]

Wow, I think I by accident ended up on an active-fund-selection board. If you want to select your actively-managed funds, should not you at least know your fund manager for example? I can at least understand people buying BRK for Buffet's management but I wonder how many of the posters even know the manager names of these funds without looking it up? Are you planning to switch the fund when current manager leaves? Do you know how long your managers have been managing these funds?

What do you think these funds managers know that others don't? Or what makes these funds inherently more likely to outperform going forward? I am genuinely interested... maybe there IS a free lunch after all!

[investor]

it is a management team that follows a strict criteria defined by the prospectus. The lead manager's change from time to time but the funds keep clicking along at pretty much the same pace. Showing that it is not the specific manager. Not the same manager picking equities that picks the bonds.

investor

[rkhusky]

Thanks to all the replies. My wife's 50% Wellington/50%Wellesley are in tax-deferred Roth IRA. This really helps us with our decision about these two funds. I like the one comment about VG Equity Income and Short Term Bond fund to decrease the bond duration. We will own Wellington and Wellesley for the long term until we need to withdraw for retirement.

I do feel like kind of a hypocrite though. 80% of our retirement funds are VG index funds so holding 20% of these two active funds makes me feel like a hypocrite.
These two active-managed funds however do have low ER's so that makes me feel better.

Some value investing purity, others value cash in the bank.

[foxfirev5]

I own Wellington and my wife Wellesley in our Roth IRA's. The Roths are the accts we plan to hold until passing to our children. We feel fairly secure with these funds. The other bigger accts are held in VG Index Funds which are rebalanced at 3% bands.

[Professor Emeritus]

I do feel like kind of a hypocrite though. 80% of our retirement funds are VG index funds so holding 20% of these two active funds makes me feel like a hypocrite.
These two active-managed funds however do have low ER's so that makes me feel better.

You are not being a hypocrite, unless you are preaching indexing to others. You could be described as a heretic
all the same bond indexing is not the same as stock indexing.
Private placements, government bonds and nonpublic risk information makes it harder to determine the Market.

I am satisfied that Wellesley does a solid professional job of approximating a "bond dividend index fund", at modest cost

[Levett]

"I wonder how many of the posters even know the manager names of these funds without looking it up? Are you planning to switch the fund when current manager leaves? Do you know how long your managers have been managing these funds?"

1. No, I don't know the names of the managers nor do I know where they went to college ( I assume they did) nor would I recognize them (he/she/them) on the street.

2. There have been manager changes/retirements during my time of investing and, no, I did not switch. Why would I?

3. No, I don't know how long the managers have managed the funds. I just know three generations of my family have owned funds managed by Wellington Management.

As you can see, we do not share similar concerns. Wellington Management has a very deep bench, and Wellington Management does not cultivate diva managers as some firms do.

Like others, I own some active-lite (tax-deferred space)+ some indexed (taxable space).

Lev

[learning_head]

"I wonder how many of the posters even know the manager names of these funds without looking it up? Are you planning to switch the fund when current manager leaves? Do you know how long your managers have been managing these funds?"

1. No, I don't know the names of the managers nor do I know where they went to college ( I assume they did) nor would I recognize them (he/she/them) on the street.

2. There have been manager changes/retirements during my time of investing and, no, I did not switch. Why would I?

3. No, I don't know how long the managers have managed the funds. I just know three generations of my family have owned funds managed by Wellington Management.

As you can see, we do not share similar concerns. Wellington Management has a very deep bench, and Wellington Management does not cultivate diva managers as some firms do.

Like others, I own some active-lite (tax-deferred space)+ some indexed (taxable space).

Lev

Thanks for response Lev. Sounds like in your case, these funds are in your family mostly due to family traditions / history.

I am not sure what "Wellington Management" really is? Isn't it just a name of an entity whose managers manage the money and come and go? So, how is it different from families where generations of them owned GM? GM have worked them well... until it did not.

Your funds may very well work for many more generations to come, I don't know, but then so can any fund, just as well. I understand the deep-rooted family traditions are hard to change, but I am curious if there is more to it than a tradition - is there anything inherent to these funds that gives them an edge over the market?

it is a management team that follows a strict criteria defined by the prospectus. The lead manager's change from time to time but the funds keep clicking along at pretty much the same pace. Showing that it is not the specific manager. Not the same manager picking equities that picks the bonds.

Ok, so I think you are saying there are in general 2 components to the alpha (i.e. to the return over the market):
(a) automatics "strict criteria" / "bounds" to which managers must adhere, and
(b) managers ability to deliver alpha.
You are saying (b) is relatively negligible compared to (a) in these funds because different managers over time delivered a positive alpha. You are further implying I think that there is not much point to worrying about quality of managers, because even if a "bad" manager is managing the funds, (a) will overwhelm the negative impact from the bad manager.

So, you are saying these funds have some ("magic" / "secret"?) formula that delivers better risk-adjusted returns that others have not found out or figured out over all this time, right? Further, managers that leave these funds are not taking this knowledge to their new funds apparently...

So, how does this fit with the research claiming this should not be happening? In other words, all this claimed research by Bogle and others indicating that this is impossible or extremely unlikely?

Can you (or anyone) reconcile for me the two?

[Levett]

Goodness me! No magical reasoning allowed in my house.

It's about comfort and reliability and refusing to be a maximizer.

Apparently, I'm not alone in my comfort with Wellington Management (and neither is Vanguard itself given the amount of assets it has managed by Wellington).

http://www.wellington.com/

Lev

[Karl]

I used to own a modest amount of Wellesley for a few years. And, yes, the interest rate risk of Intermediate bonds would concern me given how exceptionally low rates currently are. This concern about intermediate durations applies regardless of whether one owns those two particular funds or not.

I used to be quite a large fan of Intermediate-Term Investment Grade, a fund which over the last year I've entirely gotten out of, moving into ST instead. Is it the right move? I don't know as I lack a crystal ball. If it turns out like all my other attempts at market timing there's a good chance I'll be wrong. Though even if I'm wrong, I guess we can figure it's not a huge mistake. When Intermediate yields 2.2% and Short-Term is 1.2% then if rates remain in the cellar forever I lose 1% a year in return, though that's the price to be paid to insure against more severe losses should interest rates climb.

At current rates, I'd prefer to simply play it safe. I just can't get excited about locking into longer bonds when yields stink.

[investor]

Wellington management is free to change the duration of bonds in either of the two funds. Seems like they must have done a pretty good job of that in the past. But they have probably been just lucky all of these years.

investor

[Toons]

Wellesley here in both mine and my spouses Roth Iras.

[jjunk]

I'm 50/50 Wellington/Wellesley in my Roth, Traditional IRA and taxable accounts. I'm indexed in my 401k only because Fidelity charges me to buy either of these two funds. I've struggled for the last couple of years with how to best allocate my overall investments. I found this site around that time and first decided I wanted to slice and dice, then I decided I would do only indexes, then I didn't want exposure to mortgages so I switched my bonds for treasuries, and on and on. Then I decided I wanted to sleep at night and I've achieved that by owning these two funds. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm right....I don't know if I'll ever really know. But I'm 39 and have 15 or so years before retirement at which point I'll find out.