Keep Bond Worries in Perspective

Whether your guru is Jack Bogle, Bill Gross, or Roger Ibbotson, the smart money is on bonds posting disappointing returns during the next decade.

The logic is certainly sound. Bond returns are composed of two elements: whatever income they pay out and any price changes in the bonds themselves. And on both counts, the situation for bonds looks bleak. Current yields, historically a good proxy for bond returns in the future, remain ultra-low and should interest rates head higher (they only really have only one way to go), prospects for declining bond prices are very real.

Given that dour outlook, it's tempting to downplay bonds as a portion of your portfolio. Some investors have suggested that you might as well hunker down in cash until worries about rates blow over. You'll have to settle for lower yields, but at least you won't face the principal losses you might confront in bonds.

Alternatively, if market watchers are right that bonds are in for a depressing decade, all the money we might see come sloshing out of bonds would have to go somewhere. From that standpoint, it might seem compelling to swap at least some of your fixed-income stake for stocks.

First, a Bit of Context
But before we go too far in forecasting a doomsday scenario for bonds, it might be helpful to consider a couple of things. First, as Eric Jacobson pointed out in this article and as Vanguard taxable fixed-income head Ken Volpert discusses in this video, the bond market is a pretty efficient machine, and current bond prices factor in multitudinous bits of information about the economy and the prospect for interest rates. For you to take an antibond bet and, say, shorten up your fixed-income portfolio or move entirely to cash, you're essentially saying that you have better foresight of what bonds will do in the future compared with other market participants. You might, but you might not.

And while it's hard to get excited about investing in an asset class with the threat of losses looming over it, it's also worthwhile to consider the likelihood and magnitude of losses one might face in bonds, especially if you have a time horizon of a few years or more. (If your time horizon for your money is shorter than that, you belong in cash.)

The Barclays Capital US Aggregate Bond Index, a broad index tracking much of the American fixed-income market, for example, hasn't posted a loss in any rolling three-year period since 1983. Granted, that was a very favourable period for bonds, marked by generally declining interest rates. But even an examination of a less forgiving bond-market environment shows that the threat of rising interest rates shouldn't prompt a wholesale panic.

A recent Fidelity study, looking back to the period of 1941-81, when yields rose from 0.5% to 16%, showed that investors in intermediate-term US Treasury bonds actually lost money in just 1% of the rolling three-year periods during those 40 years. Yes, rising rates depressed bond prices during that period, but the higher yields that investors were able to pick up offset the price declines in most cases. Due to the ability to earn higher yields, intermediate-term Treasury investors actually made money during that inhospitable 40-year stretch. They averaged a 3.3% annualised gain during that period, well below bonds' average gains of 5.3% since 1926, but a positive gain all the same.

Additionally, the magnitude of losses that one might expect from bonds, even in a tough interest-rate environment, is also apt to be a lot lower than what you'd see from stocks. To use a recent example, long-term US government bond funds, which tend to be extremely sensitive to changes in interest rates, lost 9% in 2009 amid concerns that rates would trend higher. Such a loss is never welcome, to be sure, but it pales in comparison to the 37% loss that S&P 500 investors faced in 2008.

Opportunity Costs of Sitting in Cash
But why face any loss in bonds, you may wonder? Why not just hunker down in cash and wait until this whole thing blows over?

The key reason is that there's no guarantee that rates will go straight up from here. If the economy continues to grow in fits and starts for a while, bonds could tread water or even appreciate, so you'd unnecessarily be settling for the rock-bottom yields of cash.

What to Do?
Even though the prospect of rising rates shouldn't dictate a wholesale revision of your asset allocation, there are still steps to take to protect yourself.

For starters, consider downplaying long-term bonds as part of your portfolio, as Jack Bogle suggests in this video. Yes, long-term bonds have gained about a percentage point per year more than intermediate-term bonds, on average, during the past decade, but their volatility as measured by standard deviation has been almost twice as high.

Second, consider delegating a big chunk of your portfolio's fixed-income position to a core fund whose manager isn't shy about factoring the interest-rate environment into his or her outlook.

Finally, if you're holding money you truly can't afford to lose, stick with true cash rather than short-term bonds or much higher-yielding (and higher-risk) substitutes such as bank-loan funds. Yes, yields on certificates of deposit and money market funds are low right now, but you're looking to this sleeve of your portfolio for stability rather than big return potential.