Dollar duration measures the dollar change in a bond's value to a change in the market interest rate. The dollar duration is generally used by professional bond fund managers as a way of approximating the portfolio's interest rate risk. Dollar duration is one of several different measurements of bond duration.
|||Dollar duration is based on a linear approximation of how a bond's value will change in response to changes in interest rates. The actual relationship between a bond's value and interest rates is not linear. Therefore, dollar duration is an imperfect measure of interest rate sensitivity, and it will only provide an accurate calculation for small changes in interest rates.