Next WylieMoney Slowly Fund Category: Short Term Bond

The thirteenth fund category I researched for my mutual fund portfolio experiment was short term bonds. Typically I have been adding one fund per month from each category, to the WylieMoney Slowly portfolio on the first significantly down day of each month.

Bonds typically rise in value when equities plummet and vice versa, so this month, on the next day that US markets are up significantly, I will hypothetically invest $2500 into a Short Term Bond Fund.

The fund Ioriginally chose for this experiment was APSTX American Performance S/T Inc N/L My Post. The fund I actually own in this category in my brokerage is JASBX Janus Short Term Bond. These are still the best two options available for no fee and no load through Etrade for an intial investment of $2500 or less.

Recently, APSTX has struggled losing 1.11% in value over the last month compared to a 0.24% gain by JASBX. The Janus fund has lower expenses but much higher turnover. The Janus fund appears to have a new fund manager, while the American Fund's manager has been on board for 4 years.

Since this experiment started on May 01, 2007, JASBX has doubled the return of APSTX. The combination of lower expenses and better performance even over a 10 year period give the slight edge to JASBX but I already have 3 Janus funds in the WylieMoney Slowly portfolio. JASBX has higher turnover and a slightly lower overall bond rating.


Also, JASBX has over 77% of its assets concentrated in its top holdings. So I'm choosing APSTX which is more diverse, has slightly better credit quality in its holdings, lower turnover, slightly longer management tenure and is not another Janus fund in my portfolio.