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Wiandt: This is another asset allocation-focused question: Given the almost unprecedented experience of 10 years with bond and equity prices—where you saw bonds really outperform equities over a very long time horizon—should investors be looking at how they do asset allocation between fixed income and equities in a different way?
Bogle: Well, it’s funny that after the previous 20 years ended in 1999 with bonds doing so much worse than stocks—although if you start at the beginning with very high interest rate yields, bonds did actually pretty well—the average return on bonds running through those years was probably about 6% or 7%. And the return on stocks was about 17% over 20 years. And everybody was saying, “Shouldn’t we have more stocks?”
And the answer is “No. You shouldn’t have more stocks.” They are selling at very high valuations and there is a lot of reversion to the mean. You know, high stock returns tend to be followed by low stock returns. Great booms are followed by great busts. Prices revert to kind-of normal valuations over time. So at this time, I don’t think that one should pay a lot of attention to what happened in the last 10 years. I think what happened in the last 10 years—particularly to the stock market, or entirely to the stock market---is very much a reversion of the mean of the excess, greatly excess return that we had in the two previous decades.
Don’t forget, as 1999 ended and 2000 began, stocks were selling at almost 40 times earnings. That can’t stay at 40 times earnings; it has to come down. Now, in this muddy situation that we have, they are probably selling about 20 times these depressed earnings. It’s hard to get a handle on that. But half as highly valued and could come down a little bit. But bond returns … people should understand very importantly about bond returns that today’s yields are the best possible approximation of what bonds will deliver in the next 10 years. Let’s call that a 5% return.
There happens to be, over time, a 91% correlation between the interest rate in which you go into the bond market at and the return that the bond market provides over the next 10 years. So we have a pretty good idea that bond returns would be about 4%–6%. You take your chances on stock returns, and if you think they are going to be much lower than that guess I gave—I suppose if you are a market timer, you should reallocate to bonds if you think stocks are going to return less than 5%. But I don’t think we know enough to do that with much confidence.
I would further say, to me, now—and I’m very conservator investor, extraordinarily conservative—that I believe your bond position should equal your age. And my bond position does equal my age. So I really had a good year last year. Sometimes it’s a blessing to be old, but only rarely.
So, I think one should look at one’s asset allocation in a certain way. Let’s say you decide, for a whole bunch of reasons, that you want to be, say 70%—you’re a younger investor—70% in stocks and 30% in bonds. If you think you can do some forecasting about the direction of the bond or stock market, particularly the stock market, and you think it is going to be down, don’t get out of stocks at 70%, maybe go to 60%. Don’t go below 50%—call it 20 percentage points below your allocation—any more than you should never go above that.
I don’t think that is a good strategy. But it is a much better strategy than thinking, “I’m either in the market or I’m out of it.” Those wholesale changes in equity ratio I think are going to destroy the retirement funds of countless investors that follow it.
Wiandt: We are moving toward wrapping up now. I just have a couple of things to note. We have all the slides up and a recording of the webinar up on the Web site, IndexUniverse.com.
With that, I just really want to thank you, Mr. Bogle, for taking the time with all the investors here. I think it was outstanding. And I’m sure that all the Bogleheads out there really enjoyed it. And thanks to all of you for attending as well.
Bogle: Well, I enjoyed being with all of you. I hope you will forgive my bluntness, but any of you who know me realize it is probably a little late to give up on that. Have a great day everybody.
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