My 60/40 AA was getting a little out of whack so yesterday I did a little early rebalancing and moved a few chess pieces around between my taxable & tax deferred accounts. Part of that process is to review a few charts, one being the Vanguard Historical Index Risk/Return Chart, and the other being some of Paul Merriman's work since he is a big tables/charts guy. Like many here, I have bought into the belief that I should expect future returns to be much lower due to low yielding bonds and "over priced" stocks. In fact, I have conservatively underwritten a 5% average return going forward for my 60/40 AA... but should I??
As I looked at the 2 sets of numbers (which I realize are not truly apples to apples, but close enough), I noticed the Vanguard 60/40 average annual returns from 1926 - 2019 was slightly better than the previous years chart...
Average annual return 8.77%
Best year (1933) 40.57%
Worst year (1931) –27.58%
Years with a loss 22 of 94
Then, I looked at the simple Merriman 60/40 table (S&P/Bonds) from 2008 - 2020, the same period we had extremely low interest rates and even some bumps up & down, and the average annual returns surprised me...
2008 -21.1
2009 16.3
2010 11.7
2011 4.6
2012 10.5
2013 16.8
2014 9.1
2015 1.4
2016 8.1
2017 13.3
2018 -2.1
2019 21.7
2020 15.1
13 Yr Avg 8.1
We have been talking about low yields killing the bond market for 10+ years and how bond prices have no place to go but up. None the less, bond fund total returns have done their thing as a ballast and provided better (at least I think) overall returns in many years. Are we getting to conservative with our future return expectations? So why, THIS TIME, will it be different??
What say you?
As I looked at the 2 sets of numbers (which I realize are not truly apples to apples, but close enough), I noticed the Vanguard 60/40 average annual returns from 1926 - 2019 was slightly better than the previous years chart...
Average annual return 8.77%
Best year (1933) 40.57%
Worst year (1931) –27.58%
Years with a loss 22 of 94
Then, I looked at the simple Merriman 60/40 table (S&P/Bonds) from 2008 - 2020, the same period we had extremely low interest rates and even some bumps up & down, and the average annual returns surprised me...
2008 -21.1
2009 16.3
2010 11.7
2011 4.6
2012 10.5
2013 16.8
2014 9.1
2015 1.4
2016 8.1
2017 13.3
2018 -2.1
2019 21.7
2020 15.1
13 Yr Avg 8.1
We have been talking about low yields killing the bond market for 10+ years and how bond prices have no place to go but up. None the less, bond fund total returns have done their thing as a ballast and provided better (at least I think) overall returns in many years. Are we getting to conservative with our future return expectations? So why, THIS TIME, will it be different??
What say you?