audreyh1
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Has the game changed with the relationship between bonds and equities? I thought (many years ago) that the concept was that bonds got better when equities declined, and vice versa. Has the world of ZIRP changed that? Now, bonds look like stuffing money under the mattress,and equities go up and down. If that is the case, then rather than a percentage, it would make sense to hold x number of years in fixed, and the balance in equities. That way you would have a shield over being forced to sell stocks in a down market (at some point, you still need to sell, and when you decide to sell it becomes market timing). This past ten years it has been a situation where the overweight in stocks has improved portfolio performance. Unless bonds begin to appreciate when stocks falter, then all you are doing is averaging the performance of stocks towards 0 (or whatever the yield is on bonds).
They still do. No ZIRP didn’t change that. The swings may not be as dramatic but they are still there. Just look at the sudden and powerful flight to quality in Dec 2018. Some bond funds that had been negative for the year actually turned positive.