A video on Charles Schwab's website asks, "Are You Going Too Short-Term in Your Bond Portfolio?" Schwab's Kathy Jones explains, "With the Federal Reserve raising interest rates over the past couple of years, short-term investments like treasury bills and CDs with maturities of under a year or so have become very popular with investors, and rightly so. In the treasury bill market, a one-year T-bill right now will generally yield around 2.3%. A year ago, you would have had to buy a seven-year treasury note to get that much yield. So, naturally, investors have gravitated to the part of the market where they can get more yield with less interest-rate risk over time. But one of the concerns that we have is that investors may be getting too short-term in their bond portfolios." She adds, "As the Federal Reserve has been raising short-term interest rates over the past couple of years, we've suggested investors focus the average duration in their fixed income portfolios in the short-to-intermediate-term area -- that is, two to five years for treasuries and investment-grade corporate bonds. And the reason is that as the Fed raises short-term rates, the yield curve tends to flatten, the difference between long- and short-term rates tends to narrow, and you get more return for less interest rate risk at the shorter end of the yield curve. But we don't think investors should abandon intermediate- or longer-term bonds entirely in their portfolios."

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