Looking at  historical data, one can see that in the rising rate environment from 1940-1982, stocks tended to do better while in the meantime, bonds suffered. But are we in a similar era as in those years?

We have updated our brokerage specific mutual portfolios and several long term timing based advanced portfolios. 

We discussed the long term bond correction and the weakness in fixed income assets. 

We study 20/80, 35/65 and 50/50 stocks T-bonds balanced portfolios. Through a long 80 plus year history, we show that these balanced portfolios can weather a rising environment. 

We look at long term Treasury bond behavior in the past 80 plus years. It shows that T-bonds are volatile, should be treated as a special asset class. Furthermore, in a consistent rising rate environment, T-bonds can incur loss, though not as bad as one might think. 

We show the modified 529 asset allocation strategies’ results and believe the loosen rebalance policy is a good improvement but still not good enough. 

This newsletter reviews and adds more portfolios whose cash components can be replaced with total return bond fund portfolios. 

Many experts have warned that we are in a low return environment. Understanding this is useful to help position our investments. 

We continue our discussion of brokerage specific core mutual fund portfolios and introduce portfolios for Etrade and Merrill Edge. 

It matters when to invest, even for a long term investment. We also discuss the magic of compounding. 

We look at brokerage specific portfolios that are using a simplified set of core and index mutual funds. 

We update our newsletter archives and comment on the letters published in the past nine months. 

As DoubleLine introduced its total return bond ETF TOTL, we now have several reasonable ETFs in this space to form a reasonable tactical portfolio.

We make some educated discussions on why global tactical asset allocation is not ‘popular’. 

We report the latest performance of permanent portfolios and all weather portfolios. We also discuss  the future performance of the permanent portfolio.

Asset allocation funds can be used to further diversify one’s holdings. Furthermore, good fund managers’ insights can broaden our perspective on current investment environment. 

Risk is everywhere. We manage it daily. The last minute play in Super Bowl 2015 is a classic example to illustrate the importance of risk management. We also discuss risk in our current environment and call for risk aversion. 

We review various composite portfolios. Many of these can have better returns because of investments in their fixed income portions. 

We review fixed income investing. As markets are undergoing more volatile correction, we are optimistic that more opportunities will open up in fixed income investments.