Should I go for Short Term or Long Term bonds? Any recommendations based off today's climate?

Hmmm techincally speaking as what Mr Hariz as mentioned, the duration of SSBs are 10 years. But let's say hypothetically speaking you want to plan for say, 5 years only, you still can get SSBs given the liquidity of SSBs - you can whenever you like, pull out of SSBs with prinicpal guaranteed, just that your Yield won't be the stated yield after 10 years, it will be a smaller yield as SSBs have "accelerating yield". This means that if the bond is issued at say - 2.5% yield after 10 years, you start off at maybe 2% yield in year 1, ending off at 2.9~3% yield in year 10, and your yields over the years average out to get your 2.5%. So technically speaking, it is possible to use SSBs - but just that it is horribly inefficient to do so in my opinion for any duration below 10 years!

If not, i suggest you go for long term bonds - why I say this is because of the possible down turn we may be experiencing soon. Most analysts say we are currently in the late stage of our business cycle - not peak , but late, and recently the US yield curve inverted for the first time since 2007, which preluded the previous market crash. though the yields aren't exactly "wow" right now at about 2.5% for SG 30y bonds and 2.96% for US 30y bonds, these bonds are safe because they are from countries with a good ability to pay for their debt - SG because we have a good amount of reserve, US because they are printing the backbone currency for financial markets.

Buying long term bonds will lock in the interest rates today, and allow you to be able to get good interest payments in the downturn. However since US 2y to 5y yields have dropped below the shortest term bond yield of 1 month, it may be better to invest in Singapore bond for now - there won't be currency exchange headaches if you invest in SG 10y bonds since they pay out in SGD! The picture attached is from the US Treasury website that shows US treasury yields everyday- look at the 2 - 5 years, they are lower than even the 1M treasury rate! this means more people are willing to take the time risk factor of locking in money for these longer bonds, rather than the 1M, because they see it as a good hedge for whats to come! https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-c...

TLDR: buy LT bonds is my suggestion - by LT meaning more than 1 year. You most likely will see a recession in your lifetime sooner or later, and there are warning signs present right now that may suggest it is soon. my suggestion - 3 to 5y is a good idea, if not, 10 is also okay! If you are going 10: look into perhaps SSBs if you like the better liquidity, if not SGS will payout slightly more due to the lack of liquidity!

Depends on the role of bonds in your portfolio (hope you do have a portfolio?!)

If you are in bonds for the income, go for long duration bond ETFs (duration is a technical term different from 'term') because they will give you pretty good coupons.

Short usually refers to 1 to 3 years duration. Intermediate is 3-7. IF you want 'stability' - as in the role of bonds in your poprtfolio is to reduce overall volatility, then go for short term.

If you are trying to make capital gains from the prices of bonds, you will need to time the market just like equity. Since the US Fed is now expected to keep interest rates constant or even make a cut, the prices of bonds have gone up (to match the yield expectations). So - its upto your reading of what the Fed will do, and what will actually happen in the economy - to decide if you want to be in bonds. Remember that everyone expected the Fed to raise rates 4 times last year and it didnt happen.If you want to take minimal risk, and want to be in cash, you can go for short/ultrashort bond ETFs.