MFS Bond AMFBFX

Morningstar Rating

Fund Research and Analysis

by David Kathman, CFA

MFS Bond is back in the groove.

After a couple of tough years in which its total returns ranked in the bottom quartile of the intermediate-term bond category, this fund has been riding high in 2009, with a 26% year-to-date gain as of Nov. 4, 2009, that put it in the category's top 5%. Read more

Kudos

Doesn't make big interest-rate bets.

Solid returns over the past eight years. Read more

Risks

The fund's returns took a major hit as the impact of the subprime-mortgage crisis spread through the bond market.

Above-average volatility relative to other funds in its category.

The fund is not very tax-efficient. Read more

Strategy

This fund's managers make only occasional tweaks to the fund's duration (a measure of interest-rate sensitivity) but often adjust the portfolio's credit quality. They allocate between 50% and 90% of assets to corporate bonds, of which 5% to 15% are high yield. Read more

Management

Since Nov. 1, 2005, this fund has been managed by Richard Hawkins, who has been a fixed-income analyst and manager with MFS since 1988, and Robert Persons, a senior fixed-income analyst at MFS since 2000. They replaced Bill Adams, who had been managing the fund since July 2000. Read more

Inside Scoop

This intermediate-term bond fund holds a lot of corporate debt relative to its average peer, and it uses credit quality rather than interest-rate bets to react to market conditions. Read more

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