Koolau
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
I had an early lesson in bond fund avoidance in 1987. Natively, I believed the "stocks zig, bonds zag" line. That was after my BIL warned me away from bond funds and urged short individual issues! But the impact was smaller back then as it was not as many years of saving. Unfortunately, the tax law based accounts I'm stuck with don't have the ability to buy individual bonds. One has a stable value fund, and everything in that account is in the SVF, but that leaves more to be allocated to bonds. So even though I'd rather not own any bonds through a fund because bond funds are forced to sell at fire sale prices when the "wisdom of the investors" takes flight to cash, I'm still invested in a bond fund.
A question about the statistic about flight into money market funds. Does that track through to the final destination? I can imagine selling the long bond fund and buying a very short one. It seems like market timing (of the bond flavor) would be to twist the knob to short in situations when there's going to be rate increases and twist the other way, towards long, when the rates aren't going any higher.
This makes sense to me. And I don't see it as "traditional" market timing. Of course, I'm the world's worst investor, so what do I know?