[jterenzio]

I'm not sure that works universally. If you buy a bond with a 2% yield today that matures in 3 years and you decide to sell in 1 year instead and at that point the current rate is 3% the price you sell at will be lower than the price you paid so you won't make a 2% return in the first year...

Re: fees depends on your platform. Fidelity charges no fees or markups for treasuries but if your platform does it's something to consider in addition to bid/ask spread.

[barbegal]

What you're missing is that on average the market would have factored that into the price of the 1 year bond.

If you look at past data there is on average no difference between buying 1 year bonds and keeping them to maturity and buying 3 year bonds and selling after 1 year.

The only case maybe for buying 1 year bonds is where you have another contract which matures in 1 year denominated in the same currency. E.g. I have a mortgage payment of $1020 that I have to make in 1 year so I should invest $1000 into a bond that pays 2% interest.

[dmoy]

> past data

Can you link that data? Is it data from the past 5-10 years? Or much more historical?

[barbegal]

This paper has data up to 2016 https://www.valueeconomics.com/data/The%20Bond%20Ladder%20Fa...