Many investors regard bonds as the frumpier cousins to stocks. Their prices rarely pop or plummet. They usually deliver a lower return, and—aside from a glamorous cameo in the 1980s thriller Die Hard—they are not part of popular culture in the same way as, say, GameStop or Tesla shares. They are, though, a critical part of any well-managed portfolio, and with the stock market looking particularly frothy, this may be more true than ever.
On their face, bonds are simple: An investor loans money to a government or company and gets a guaranteed return with interest over a fixed period of time. But compared with what they know about stocks, many investors are less sure of which bonds to buy, or how to buy or evaluate them. Fortune spoke to three experts who walked us through some of the basics around bonds, but also shared a few lesser-known insights.
