That is exactly what I was hoping for when I bought my first TIPS fund many years ago. It didn't take long to realize that the value of the fund did NOT track inflation well at all.if to be useful means that the investment must track inflation upward and downward as inflation occurs,
Suspecting that the price of the fund was moving independently based on fluctuating demand for inflation protection, I did an experiment and purchased an individual TIPS bond (easy to do at Vanguard). After tracking that for a while, I realized that although the market value of an individual TIPS bond is also affected by fluctuating demand, those price movements are irrelevant unless I'm going to sell that TIPS before it matures. If holding to maturity, the only relevant quantity is what TreasuryDirect calls adjusted principal (face value times index ratio), which does indeed move up and down in lockstep with the CPI.
Only if the latter is referring to individual TIPS that will be sold before maturity. Individual TIPS held to maturity are quite useful indeed.then TIPS funds and TIPS bonds individually don't do that. Therefore they are both useless.
Statistics: Posted by GettingCloser — Wed Mar 20, 2024 8:39 pm — Replies 16 — Views 2059