End of what period? Are you shutting down your portfolio on some date? Aligning bond maturities with date of death?Booglie wrote: That's not the entire issue though. When people think about bonds, they are thinking of the bond ETFs, which are easier to trade and don't necessarily require direct access to the US bond market. For US bonds, this means that if the rates slowly and constantly rise for 10 years, you'll get negative real returns (not just nominal) for 10 years. With actual bonds, if their market-to-market value depreciates, you're at least guaranteed the nominal value at the end of the period.
Holding individual bonds provides the illusion of no risk of principal only if you do not reinvest cash flows from coupon payments and maturing bonds. Bond fund managers generally beat the performance of individuals managing their own bonds because they stay fully invested, maintainibg portfolio duration.