CNBC Stock Blog
- How Stock Investors Can Play Holiday Travel
- 3 Growth Opportunities in Tech: Analyst
- Prep Your Portfolio for Next Week: Stock Pickers
- Global Growth Good for Portfolio: Stock Picker
- Expect Tech Sector to Rise in Q4: Strategist
- Expect a 5-10% Market Pullback: Stock Picker
- 3 Stock Picks for This Volatile Environment: Portfolio Manager
- 3 Financial Stocks May Lead Final Rally: Market Researcher
- Gold's 'Money' Value is $4,000 to $11,000: Market Strategist
- Commercial Real Estate Bottom Near: Market Pro
- U.S. Stocks Slip, Dollar Rises
- How Stock Investors Can Play Holiday Travel
- Time Lapse World Series Is A Great Play
- Hirschhorn: Greed...or Fear
- My Top 10 Tech Toys for the Holidays
- iPhone a Better Gaming Platform Than Android?
- May Day For Dendreon
- 100% Mortgage Financing From USDA
- Holiday Tipping: Who And How Much
- This Season: Everybody's A Scrooge
- Warren Buffett, Bill Gates 'Walk & Talk' At Columbia
- Senate Democrats at Odds Over Health Care Bill
- What if a Recovery Is All in Your Head?
- Thanksgiving Week Stuffed With Economic News
- A Taxpayer's Must Read: The Fed Waltz With AIG
- Newspaper Circulation May Be Worse Than it Looks
- 10 Tips to Get Out of Debt
- Investors to Goldman: Be Less Greedy
RSS FEED
Text Size 
Special to CNBC.com
Bond investors need to think like lenders, because their money needs to be productive, said Bill Larkin, portfolio manager at Cabot Money Management.
In a money market right now, investors are only earning about $10 to $20 a year on a $100,000 investment, and "that's just not enough to meet anybody's investment objective," Larkin said.
Instead, Larkin offered five alternative strategies for bond investors to increase their returns:
- Move from money markets to short-term bonds of about three to seven years.
- Put money in three-year Treasury bills, which earn 10 times as much as a three-month Treasury bill. Also, two-year Treasurys will earn about $950 a year on a $100,000 investment.
- Buy US-backed agency bonds.
- Purchase investment-grade corporate bonds, such as General Electric [GE
Loading...
()
], CVS [CVS
Loading...
()
], Hewlett-Packard [HPQ
Loading...
()
] and Hess [HES
Loading...
()
].
- Invest in an exchange-traded fund. They are very diversified and transparent, they pay monthly and are liquid daily.
______________________________
More Market Intelligence:
- Which Transport Stock Got an 'Outperform' Rating?
- Falling VIX a 'Very Bad Sign': Market Expert's Warning
______________________________
More CNBC Data Pages:
______________________________
CNBC Slideshows:
______________________________
______________________________
Companies That Reported Earnings Thursday:
AT&T [T
Loading...
()
]
McDonald's [MCD
Loading...
()
]
Travelers [TRV
Loading...
()
]
______________________________
Disclosures:
Disclosure information was not available for Larkin or his company.
______________________________
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes