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Every bank bond dog has its day

I find myself in the happy position of having made 12% in three months on my bond fund, after six months spent watching my lump sum dwindle. You'd think this would be good news for millions of other investors who have piled into corporate-bond funds and vindication for the banks that have been merrily flogging these funds to customers fed up with poor savings rates.

You'd be wrong. The bond sector into which most investors have poured their hard-earned cash isn't the sector that has led this recovery. As is so often the case in this marketing-driven industry, investors have been encouraged into an asset at precisely the wrong time.

The amount of money going into bond funds exceeded £1 billion for the fifth consecutive month in April, said the Investment Management Association, the industry's trade body.

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Most of the inflows have been into the corporate-bond sector, where funds invest primarily in investment-grade bonds (debt issued by blue-chip companies when they need to raise finance). However, this sector has managed only a measly 3.4% return over the past three months.

The strategic-bond sector, where funds invest in a mix of investment-grade and higher-risk bonds, has gained a healthier 7.9% while my own fund, Henderson Strategic Bond, is up 12.2%.

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Before I sound too gloating, I would have done even better had I opted for the high-yield sector, the most speculative, which has jumped 21.4%.

Proving the adage that every dog has its day, the biggest risers over the past three months have been the ones with the largest exposure to bank bonds - including many old New Star funds. Henderson couldn't have taken over John Duffield's New Star at a more opportune time.

In the high-yield sector, for example, New Star is at No 3 with a gain of 30% in three months. New Star's Sterling Bond fund, which is in the staid corporate-bond sector but had two thirds of its portfolio in bank debt, is in fifth place with a gain of 11%.

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Bank bond prices have soared in the past few months as many institutions have started buying back their debt to stabilise their balance sheets. Bonds that were trading at just 20p in the pound in the depths of the crisis have been repurchased for at least double that, giving bond funds a big boost.

No wonder Britain's biggest bond-fund manager, Richard Woolnough at M&G, has been quietly buying, including Lloyds and RBS, in the belief that their bond prices have dropped to attractive levels.

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Brian Dennehy, a financial adviser who follows these things more closely than most, said: "Nobody was going to ring a bell when the bond market truly turned the corner, but Richard Woolnough buying bank bonds is as good as it gets."

I'm not for a moment suggesting investors who piled into corporate bonds should have bought funds stuffed full of bank bonds instead. Most were cautious savers buying for yields of 6% or 7%, rather than for growth.

However, that brings us to the next problem. Yields have been falling as bond prices have recovered and they dipped below 5% last week - the first time since the collapse of Lehman Brothers last year.

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This has prompted many to declare that the time to buy investment-grade bond funds has passed. Indeed, prices could turn down as interest rates start to rise. This would make returns from investment-grade bonds look less attractive than other investments, pushing prices down and yields up.

Anyone who has taken out a bond fund in the past few months needs to look under the bonnet and work out whether it really suits their needs.

If you wanted a better return than a savings account, are you really prepared to potentially lose capital as interest rates rise? If, on the other hand, you went in for the recovery potential, are you in the right sector?

I'm in the latter camp, so I'm sticking with my fund. But the fear has to be that those in the former haven't benefited from the initial rebound and now face a risk of losing capital as rates rise to control the recovery.

Kathryn Cooper is editor of the Money section