Yes, the share price of the fund may have gone down over 15 years, but that doesn't mean that you lost money. Everytime you reinvest the interest, you purchase more shares. The gain/loss on any fund is the surrender value of the fund less the total investment.
Bonds perform inversely to conventional wisdom. You buy a $100 bond that yields 4%. As interest rates go up. the selling price of your bond goes down. Let's say you want to sell your bond and current interest is 6%. No one will buy your bond for $100 when they can buy a higher yield bond at the same price. So, you have to lower the price of your bond so that it yields 6%. The selling price of your bond is now $66.66. The reverse is true when interest rates go down. Right now, interest rates are high due to inflation.
Bonds usually get "called" when interest rates have fallen well below the original yield. It's like refinancing your mortgage when interest rates go down.
People buy bonds for many reasons. The most popular reason is that a sector of the bond market issues bonds that are not taxed by the IRS or the state. These are bonds issued by any state, city, village, etc. and are very popular in high tax states such as New York, Illinois, California, etc. For example, a $100,000 bond, yielding 6%, issued by either New York City or State, would earn $6,000 that would not be taxed by New York City, New York State or the IRS.
Hope this helps.
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