The federal government ran a deficit of $3.1 trillion in 2020. If passed, President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief proposal will pay for much of itself with bond sales. With all this debt supply, you would think that if demand does not increase, then interest rates would have to rise.
My prediction is that it will be more difficult for both U.S. stocks and bonds to go up in the coming years. Either the economy will recover and push interest rates higher and bond prices lower or we will experience a double-dip recession with falling stock prices.
Many retirees who are frustrated by low rates have put money that was earmarked for bonds into stocks, hoping the dividends plus the growth will provide sufficient income.
According to a 2014 study by Vanguard, the average investor’s portfolio contains 27% foreign stocks.[i] If the foreign stock percentage seems high, remember that the U.S. holds only half of the world’s total stock market value. This means that 50% of the world’s stock market value resides outside of the U.S.
Surprisingly, even after all this, the stock market is expensive; we usually do not begin an economic recovery with stock prices close to all-time highs. But this is not a typical recession. Conversely, bonds are a less appealing investment with interest rates dropping.
Over the last ten years, however, $1 trillion of investors’ money has moved from active management to index investing. A big reason for this is that, during that same period, most active managers underperformed lower cost-index options.
We came into this crisis with a trillion-dollar deficit and very low interest rates, challenging our ability to fight this recession with standard measures, such as government spending and central bank interest rate cuts.
Because the stock market is significantly overvalued at this time, now is an excellent time to consider rebalancing your portfolio. By rebalancing instead of selling what has gone down or buying what has gone up, investors remain diversified but go back to their original allocation. So while diversification is about the eggs, asset allocation is about the basket. What percentage of your basket is going to be in stocks and bonds?
