Gyroscopic Investing

Like I did with all of my TLT last year I'm working on selling off all of my SHY shares and converting to T-Bills bought through Fidelity (I'm getting addicted to not paying fees).

Somebody made buying long term treasuries very easy over in the Bond section of the forum. I just scroll to the end of the available bonds and choose the ones with the longest duration.

I was thinking with short term it would work in reverse but unfortunately I am presented with something I actually have to think about - namely the Coupon value. Some are zero, and others have some value.

I remember reading a discussion about this some time ago but can't seem to find it. Which is better for the PP - the zero coupon or the non-zero (discount?).

A lot depends on the tax treatment of the account. If it's taxable, you can do tricky things like buy T-bonds with high coupons at a premium in order to harvest the capital loss when they mature. Sophie has talked about this in the past and she may have even more tricks up her sleeve. If it's a tax-free account, you probably don't have to worry about any of that stuff. I just buy whatever has the highest YTM.

Damn. I was hoping some of you good folks who are actually interested in this kind of stuff would make it easy for me. Now that I've cashed out my SHY it looks like I'm going to have educate myself on buying T-bills.

notsheigetz wrote: Damn. I was hoping some of you good folks who are actually interested in this kind of stuff would make it easy for me. Now that I've cashed out my SHY it looks like I'm going to have educate myself on buying T-bills.

Sorry. Put "lard" or "guns" in the title and you will get more responses.

BearBones wrote: Sorry. Put "lard" or "guns" in the title and you will get more responses.

A post I made a while back with the subject line of 14% LTT's also worked very well.

How about "lard" and "guns" in the title?