By Rob Isbitts via Iris.xyz.
As a big baseball fan, this is the time of year when it is pretty easy to see which players are “slumping.” It is also the point in the season where you start to realize that for some players, their poor start is not a mirage. Rather, there is something deeper that is wrong. But enough about baseball.
One of the most dominant investment approaches of our time is a well-crafted marketing pitch used by many on Wall Street. It is called the “60/40” portfolio. By that, the broker or advisor means that 60% of your assets are invested in stocks, and 40% are invested in bonds. It makes investing simpler to understand, eliminates all of those nasty detail questions (like “is this really the best thing for me, or the best thing for you?”), and makes the sale easier. With that, the broker can move on to the other 10 people they need to sell this over-simplified, excessively aggressive strategy to.
Sure, I may sound bitter. Here’s why: while 60/40 portfolios have had a good run for a while, the likelihood of a repeat performance is unlikely in the years ahead. Bond rates are too low, and stocks are near all-time highs. That is a toxic combination not seen since the 1970s, way before 60/40 was a way for investment firms to build scale in their businesses, by herding people into a unified asset allocation…that for many, is not at all appropriate.
I have discussed this issue in recent articles, so I will not continue on with that. Instead, I will simply show you a recent “behind the numbers” look at why 60/40 portfolios are not all they are cracked up to be. In fact, cracking is what they are doing right now, as you read this.
Read the full article at Iris.xyz.
