Municipal Bonds and Historical Calendar Year Returns

Bonds are known as investments that come with a lower risk and a lower reward. This simple way of looking at bonds doesn't account for the wide range of bond products on the market. Treasury bonds come with low interest rates and little risk. Some municipal bonds offer higher rates and higher rewards.

To know whether these bonds are good places to put your money, learn how they have performed in the past. You should also learn about the risks that come with these sorts of investments.

How Municipal Bonds Performed Over 15 Years

Bloomberg Municipal Bond Index is thought to be the best measure for tracking municipal bond returns. The results for the 26 years are shown in the Bloomberg Municipal Bond Index table below.

To help you see how they differ, the returns of the Bloomberg Aggregate Index are also shown next to the municipal bond returns to provide a sense of how municipal bonds did, compared to the broader fixed-income market. The municipal bond market did better than the total bond market in 14 of the 26 years shown.

This return data helps show how two factors, interest-rate risk and credit risk, play roles in how municipal bonds perform.

Municipal Bond Interest-Rate Risk

With respect to interest-rate risk, you can see that municipal bonds do about as well as the broader bond market. In the three years when the Bloomberg (formerly Barclays) Aggregate Index lost ground (1994, 1999, and 2013), rates rose in two of those years. Municipals finished with a negative return in all three. On the other hand, these bonds had a positive return in 22 of the 23 years in which the bond market finished the year in a positive or neutral spot.

Municipal Bond Credit Risk

Credit risk also plays a role in the returns of municipal bonds. Credit risk is the risk that a bond will default. It includes broader factors that cause the outlook for defaults to shift. For example, an economic downturn raises the risk of defaults. This can affect bonds in which credit risk is tied to how they perform. Municipal bonds are offered by a wide range of issuers, from states and large cities to small towns and specific entities (such as airports and sewer districts). Because of this, credit risk can also impact how they do.

In 2008, rates fell, and the bond market gained over 5%, but municipal bonds lost ground. It reflects a year when a recession started. People who invested their money were steering clear of risks at that time. The housing market collapsed, which in turn led to a sharp decline in tax money for cities and other entities. At that point, concerns were raised about the possibility of an increase in the default rate.

Municipals also didn't perform well in years when there were big news headlines tied to money: 1994 (the Orange Country, California, bankruptcy); 2010 (Meredith Whitney's prediction of a "wave of defaults"); and 2013 (Detroit's bankruptcy and Puerto Rico's financial troubles). The impact of these events also helps show that there's more to how well municipal bonds do than simply which way interest rates go.

Over the long term, the returns of municipal bonds have been fairly close to those of the investment-grade market. Keep in mind that this isn't an apples-to-apples comparison since the interest on municipal bonds is tax-free. As a result, the total return of municipals after taxes is actually closer to that of investment-grade bonds than it appears at first glance.

The Bottom Line

It's often stated that bonds provide the low-risk returns conservative investors and those near or in retirement need. The table above, with its almost 20-point contrast between the best year's returns and the worst, also shows that bonds are by no means risk-free. They are less up and down than stocks, but there is still the chance of wild swings. And as with stocks, it matters a great deal when you begin investing.

Bond returns in the early 1980s were very high. This occurred because compounding gave people who put their money in bonds a head start that later investors were not able to match in most cases. Likewise, people who put their money in bonds after the meltdown era that began in 2007 have seen nearly a decade of low returns. Even when the interest rates go up again, it won't make up for this tepid start.

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