Mutual funds: Bond funds post tidy gains for '92 despite flat 4th quarter
NEW YORK -- Bond mutual funds turned in a workmanlike year in 1992 despite a flat fourth quarter.</br></br>Taxable bond funds had an average 7.87% return for the year, including price changes and reinvested dividends, according to Lipper Analytical Services Inc., a Summit, N.J., company that tracks mutual fund returns. That total return exceeded the 3.1% inflation rate, but it lagged behind stock funds' 8.88% average return.</br></br>The year's best performers were junk bond funds and convertible bond funds, which, like the stock market, got a boost from the long-delayed economic recovery. But foreign bond funds were hurt by currency upheaval in Europe.</br></br>Taxable bond funds finished with a nearly flat fourth quarter, gaining a scant 0.18%. Prices fell and yields rose on intermediate- and short-term debt securities, reducing the funds' returns.</br></br>The respectable gains come at a time when bond fund sales are soaring. Investors, disenchanted with lowly yields on money market funds, poured $88.4 billion into bond funds during the first 11 months of 1992. Last year's inflow was the second-best ever, surpassed only by 1986, when bond funds pulled in $108.6 billion.