BND

CSMasterClass

IUSB seems like a reasonable fund, but why do you think that is clearly dominates BND? Expense ratios, durations, yields, credit qualities don't differ that much (do they) and if they differ, is one more compelling than the other.

InjuryEmbarrassed532

Once the stock market catches up with the bond market and reality, the SP will look at lot like BND long term.

alpacaMyToothbrush

.07 ER is not a burdensome fee for the diversity it brings. Bond funds 'lose money' because they are forced to mark the value of their underlying securities to market. Their total returns are partly their price, but mostly the interest that's earned. If you took a thousand dollars, and bought BND and a basket of treasuries at the same date. They would have roughly the same total returns over time. If bond rates rose from 2% to 5%, you would lose money on the price of BND, sure, but in exchange you would also earn higher interest as it bought higher yielding securities. Where your basket of bonds would return the same, not because they fell in price, but because they returned a lower amount of interest over time. There is no 'free lunch' holding individual bonds over a fund. I do not fancy myself to be Bill Gross. I would much rather buy a couple index funds, pay the low fees, and chill.

Original-Poet1825

You buy more than just US stocks basically. I personally do 60% VOO 20% VXUS 20% SGOV/BND and forget about it. If there’s a big drop I don’t mind rebalancing

Electronic_Bee3134

I think you read a different thread and are commenting on my post. Because you're responding to things I never wrote. I want to dump bonds entirely, not replace BND with a different bond fund, and you're claiming the opposite. So it seems like you just didn't read my post and read something else 🤷

Wooden-Broccoli-913

I have never owned BND and will never own BND. ICPI for inflation protection and USDX for cash

Raiddinn1

You have 10% of your portfolio in BND, ok. Why do you want to change that if not for market timing, then? How is it not market timing if you keep talking about how this one fund is down in the OP? Changing your AA when something is down is called market timing, literally. That's what market timing is. I do time the market and I think anyone would call it successful if they looked at the numbers.

Electronic_Bee3134

No, I don't drip. I use the dividends to rebalance. So sometimes I end up buying more BND but not always.

Pitiful_Fox5681

Hmm, is there a leveraged BND equivalent? 

Zyltris

Dilute risk with BND or VGIT to the allocation necessary to account for her risk tolerance as well. OP said she wants it to be hands off and low stress, so some amount of bonds to lower volatility sounds like a must for her mental health (assuming she ever checks her account).

Dull_Judgment1587

Psychologically you shouldn't feel bad selling BND at a loss, because it has been paying you dividend income all these years. Trying to "time the market" with bonds can be heartbreaking in my experience. I would caution you against any kind of "I have a hunch the bond market will go back up again soon" magical thinking.

bob49877

With the ladder you get a rolling average of rates, but you protect your principal investment if you but at par and hold to maturity. With the funds, like in 2021 when rates started to increase sharply, the bond funds total returns dropped like rocks. Check the total return for bond funds before you buy in for the last 5  to 10 years and compare that to rates on individual bonds if bought at the same time.  The five year total return for BND is negative!  Plus open ended funds have a savvy investor dilution problem, explained in my other post and the Kiplinger article link.

skilliard7

bonds generally trade inversely to yields, so returns seem low because future expected returns are rising. The better way to look at BND is its yield to maturity, which is 5%

Rav_3d

> I'm 35 and the more I think about it, the less need I see for bonds at all.  Agree. With decades to retirement there's no reason to be invested in bonds. You should be aiming to maximize capital gains. Deciding whether to buy/sell an investment based on your current P/L is a trap. Either you want to be invested in BND or you don't. Whether you're sitting on a loss or gain is irrelevant.

marima33

A quick check shows BND at 2.4% total return in the last year. [https://totalrealreturns.com/](https://totalrealreturns.com/)

Gunk_Olgidar

BND is strong negative beta and performs well during market corrections and bear markets. It did great in 2022, and most recently also in March of 2026. It does lousy the rest of the time as the market goes up. And with bond interest rates climbing now, it's doing poorly as bond values drop. You'll be far better off with that 10% as cash a 3% money market fund, so you can buy the dips in the market (like 2022 and March of 2026). Then when the market tops out like it did in June 2026, you take some profits and put it back into cash until the next dip. However, this requires you to pay attention to the market news and have a notion of when the market is up and down, but not all that much more than 1x per month. If you can't or don't want to pay attention this much, then you'll be better off with all 100% in a total market ETF and just riding through the dips, because stuff like March and June of 2026 is noise, and even the bear market of 2022 is tiny and mostly meaningless on a long term 20 year chart.

Honest_Spread7227

You say you do "long term passive index investing, rebalancing monthly," yet you're letting the red ink on one specific line item dictate your entire asset allocation. Ask yourself this: if you had that exact amount of money in cash sitting in your IRA today, would you use it to buy BND? If the answer is no, then sell it. You are anchoring to your purchase price.

Mindless_Acadia_7382

My top ETF pick so far this year, beyond the ETFs listed in the question, is BND.

VexxySmexxy

I think what I'm considering at the moment is having the inheritance be put into VTI/SPY/VT in the taxable, then reallocate the 401k into a BND adjacent fund to get something close to a 60/40 stock/bond split here. I did consider JEPI (similar to the top two funds you listed), but it seems like the simplest pllan here might be the VT/BND split.

Traditional-Fox-1597

Beyond those exclusions in the title? VTI and BND. 

BizarreReverend76

Keep it in BND or something and pull 4.5% while you wait.

Jaded-Argument9961

I mean 3% Roth IRA match/3% cash back credit card on ALL purchases/$1,000 in free margin you can park in SGOV or BND for free money All that in addition to being able to invest in low cost index funds aka what serious investors do

15pH

>if you are able to survive a few years without depleting your retirement savings, isn't it better to stay with a majority equities The baseline assumption is that retirees are RETIRED and live off retirement savings. If someone has an income stream outside their savings to keep them afloat, then yeah they don't need bonds, or any savings at all! The core concept you might be missing is sequence of returns risk (SORR). Go read that and it might clarify things. Another note is that BND is a horrible bond fund to ballast an equity portfolio. BND has a ton of corporate bonds, which fail at the same time a market is tanking. SGOV is a fine place to stick money for a few years cushion to fight SORR, but short TIPS are generally better because they address the specific mechanism of short term failure.

Droo99

If you lose 200k of your 400k 401k at age 40 its a lot different than losing 2 million of your 4 million pile of money you need to live at age 60. Exactly what they should at that age depends a ton on boring details around healthcare, taxes, expenses, life expectancy, unrealized gains, etc though, very hard to simplify it down to a rule of thumb. But something like 200k in cash equivalents, 600k in a TIP/bond ladder, 600k in US stock and 600k in global stock is a decent template to start figuring it all out from i guess Also you can't compare BND past returns to SGOV  current yield. 

throwawayawayayayay

These are reasonable funds for a retiree to hold and the only real questionable thing is why to hold them all (e.g. BND and VBTLX are literally the same investment content, only difference is ETF vs. mutual fund). But yes, unless you are also a retiree, it's best to sell them and invest in VT or similar.

Temporary-Alarm-744

BND

smexypelican

Well the bigger point is one shouldn't just hold long treasury bonds or bond ETFs. Should at least be a mix, something like BND or even heavier on short medium term bonds (short term essentially being cash).

Senior-Preference678

You hit the nail on the head. That is exactly what is happening. To make it worse, you are paying a premium for that second jacket. When you buy both, you are paying two different management fees to hold the exact same top positions: \[[1](https://www.reddit.com/r/ETFs/comments/ummgke/why_is_fund_overlap_an_issue/)\] **VOO (S&P 500)**: Costs a rock-bottom **0.03%** expense ratio. **QQQ (Nasdaq-100)**: Costs **0.20%** expense ratio. By adding QQQ on top of VOO, you are actively paying **nearly 7 times more** in fees for QQQ's portion just to double-down on Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, Amazon, and Meta. **The Same Fabric** **Top 5 Holdings**: Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, Amazon, and Meta. **What happens**: These five stocks already make up roughly 25%+ of VOO. In QQQ, they make up over 40%. **The Result**: Your 50/50 portfolio isn't diversified; it is just a super-concentrated bet on a handful of tech executives **The Only True Difference** **What QQQ adds**: A tiny 6% sliver of Nasdaq-exclusive stocks (like mid-cap biotech or tech firms not yet in the S&P 500). **What QQQ drops**: You completely lose exposure to the S&P 500’s financials (JP Morgan), energy (Exxon), healthcare (Johnson & Johnson), and industrials (Caterpillar) on that portion of your money. **How to Actually Fix It** If your goal is to actually add a *different* fabric to your portfolio rather than just overlapping large-cap US equities, you have a few structural options: **For Small/Mid-Cap Exposure**: Pair VOO with an un-overlapped fund like **AVUV**or **IJR** (Small-Cap Value) to capture the bottom of the market. **For Sector Diversification**: If you want tech but want to avoid the exact same top 5 stocks, look into an equal-weighted tech ETF like **RSPT**, where every tech stock gets the same slice. **For True Diversification**: Keep VOO as your core, drop QQQ, and add international exposure (**VXUS**) or bonds (**BND**) depending on your time horizon. Source: Gemini Ai

Valvador

Holding it to maturity, yes. But bond funds aren't the same thing as holding your bond to maturity, they are constantly cycling bonds in and out. If you look at BND in 2022, you can see its "Market Value" drop significantly from, to reflect the lost opportunity cost in holding on to a 10 year bond that yields 2% when 5% bonds are going out from the FED.

soidvaas

I’m confused by this pair of comments. Wouldn’t holding an actual 10 or 30 year bond be much better downside protection than BND in the event of a crash? If holding to maturity, your RoR is determined from the entry point, it’s only varying factor being inflation.

Valvador

> 40% allocation to bond ETFs like BND and TLT moved in positive correlation with the stock market in 2022. Depending on your composition, the drawdown in that bond allocation even exceeded the broad stock market downturn. A few things: * No one should have 40% in bonds. Not even retired individuals. * If you look at Total Return, instead of "BND" stock chart it still did better than VTI. [Check this out.](https://totalrealreturns.com/n/VTI,BND) 2022 was a ~20% loss for VTI while a ~13% loss for BND. However if you look at 2008, the story was different. But you're right, bonds expose you to interest rate risk, which in the COVID days was actually significantly worse than anything recent-ish.

feedthebeetus

I am not taking about "buying a 30 year bond" In a 60/40 portfolio, a 40% allocation to bond ETFs like BND and TLT moved in positive correlation with the stock market in 2022. Depending on your composition, the drawdown in that bond allocation even exceeded the broad stock market downturn.

Fhyzikz

Sold everything but BND in my 401k. GLHF

Vindaloo6363

Percent is relative to your liquidity needs. I only hold 3-4% SGOV and Cash. Bonds and bond ETFs like BND don’t always move opposite of stocks like in 2022 and can loose significant value.

Uatatoka

Global 3 fund. 70% US (VTI), 20% international (VXUS), 10% bond (BND)

shitbergfuckstick

VTi 80% BND 20% auto withdrawals and delete app.

Raiddinn1

I'm not you and I am comfortable being way more aggressive than you, but 100% CDs is arguably the worst possible AA short of just putting all the money in checking. 50% BND and 50% SCHD might be a baby step in the right direction.

smalltalk2k

I don't think Investing a portion of your paycheck every two weeks is dollar cost averaging. It is periodic lump sum investing. You put the money into the market as soon as it becomes available. Actual dollar cost averaging is having a lump sum of cash and intentionally holding it back to invest in pieces over time. That is market timing because you hold cash expecting a better price. The data shows lump sum investing beats DCA most of the time. ​The idea that you do not lose money until you sell is a behavioral fallacy. Your wealth is exactly what your portfolio is worth today. If the market drops, you lost that wealth. Believing otherwise is mental accounting to avoid the pain of a loss, which is known as the disposition effect. The long term effect does change though depending if it is in individual stocks or broad market index funds. Broad market index funds will recover over time where individual stocks may not.  ​The forced selling point highlights a real risk. Human capital and equity returns are positively correlated. When the economy tanks, job loss often happens at the exact same time your portfolio drops. If you hold only equities like VOO (U.S. S&P 500) and carry a mortgage, you are exposed to sequence of returns risk even before retirement. I think a good solution is not avoiding stocks. It is holding an emergency fund or a fixed income allocation like BND (U.S. Total Bond Market). That breaks the correlation. If you lose your job during a recession, you spend down the safe assets instead of liquidating stocks at a loss.

Aggressive-Donkey-10

find a fiduciary fee only financial advisor for him if he refuses, then tell him 75% BND and 25% VT, and he will be fine, or to be extra safe just 6 month bank Cds at 4.5% and keep rolling them.

Upper-Olive4639

The best part of this is that you still don't have it sitting in VT, BND, or your money market fund. You beat the house and you still can't help yourself lol. Despite the tone of this post, you will undoubtedly lose it all back like you did before.

banevaderplus6000

Do not listen to anyone telling you not to help your grandfather, it is better for you to learn and for him to trust you. You will both sleep better at night because of it. The following advice is going to be almost exactly what a financial advisor will tell him. Tell him at his age he should have about half of his cash in bonds and half in an all world ETF if he wants to be average . Personally I would do VT and BNDW ETFs, some will tell you BND over BNDW but I like to invest globally even in bonds. If you really do not want any risk to lose any money, at the very least get the money into a money market fund on a brokerage account, or in a high yield savings account. $10,000 earning 3.5% annual is an extra $30 a month in interest and the rates will vary depending on inflation so you will not have to worry about value erosion. And that literally it. that is investing in a nutshell if you don't want to actually learn how to invest. Just broad, global ETFs. The ONLY rule is do not sell your investments unless you need the money for good or services. If the market crashes, do not sell unless necessary. if the market rallys, do not sell unless necessary. sideways for 100 years? do not sell unless necessary.

SoundOff2222

Maybe 70% BND + 30% VT? Something along those lines

DoinIt4DaShorteez

If he has wages, the best thing for him to do as far as actually investing would be to: Open a a regular brokerage account and a Roth IRA with Fidelity or whoever. Put $8,600 into the Roth immediately. Buy 40% VOO etf, 30% BND etf, 30% SGOV etf. Put the rest into the regular brokerage account and buy SGOV with it. On Jan 4 of next year, sell the SGOV in the regular account, move the resulting cash to the Roth, and invest it in the same 40/30/30 allocation.

Buck169

What are his expectations? Realistically, in late 60s you're not going to be "in a better position" soon, or by many dollars, unless you A. take a big risk on something speculative and B. get REALLY lucky and actually make a big score. Most likely, this is a recipe for losing it all. Less risky investing (i.e. buy and hold diverse stock funds) is a game of decades to see really significant returns. If \*you\* have any spare money at all, if you start now, you'll probably be very happy that you did so in 30 years. For someone who's already late 60s, it's not so certain. If he wants to be safe, just put the money in a MMF and at least stave off most of inflation. If he wants to gamble a bit, you can start in MMF and do something like every two or three months, take 5% of the total and invest it 50/50 in BND and either VT or VOO. Continue until 2/3 of the money is in those funds, then stop changing anything. If he wants to gamble somewhat more, put 1/3 in each an MMF, BND and VT or VOO tomorrow and get ready to be pleased or horrified, depending...

oldtimehawkey

What risk level are you? Put most of the money in a low risk like VOO or VTI. Me, I’m low risk, so I’d do 80% Then buy individual stocks with the rest till you realize there’s no way to win at that and put that into BND. Haha.

Gonz4Rockford

Earnings call was better than expected + big blockbusters coming up with The Odyssey and Spider-Man BND

Gameboy69NoScope420

Yeah open a brokerage account with whatever brokerage you feel comfortable with. Do research on what to invest in. AI is a useful tool, not full proof but useful. Others will debate me I’m sure, but ETF’s like VOO, VTI are a good place to start. Some say to grab some bonds BND or something similar, and an international ETF like VXUS. Lower %’s. As I said. Do some research and don’t blindly throw your money into things.

Emotional-Power-7242

Get rid of the commodities ETF, gold shouldn't be more than 10%, replace QAQ with an S&P 500 or US total market funds, replace cash withdrawals BND and BNDX (assuming this is a long term investment account and the cash isn't short term savings).

sweglordnagger

Swap BND with VGT

sixsixsevens

Agreed. I would ditch the BND.

Calm_Chicken_5549

So I should remove the VXUS and FZILX as well as the BND?

greenpride32

I wouldn't go with BND at your age; you have plenty of time to ride out the ups and downs of growth equities. VXUS and FZILX underperform VTI and FZROX in the long run. The reason for this is the US has the largest economy and attracts the most capital investment (which helps to perpetuate the cycle). Also most of the leading US companies operate on a global scale, so it's not as though you only invested in one domestic economy. Over the course of the long run, the difference in CAGR will make a very meaningful difference in total return. My goal in investment is to grow my net worth as much as possible by making selections that have a proven track record; everything else (diversity) is secondary. You can compare VTI (US), VT (World including US) and VXUS (World minus US) - the more US weight the better the long term performance.

leaning_on_a_wheel

Sell BND and buy more VTI

leaning_on_a_wheel

Most people would say that’s very conservative for your age. You could cut BND entirely

OneManShow23

If you want to invest but you can’t just put your damn money in VTI, VXUS, BND, and BNDX and move on. You’ll make an average 5% growth. It won’t be as glorious as doing options on a stock that shoots to the moon (Nvidia) but you’ll still reap the rewards from Nvidia or a co growing to the moon.

boundary-tail

BND

srfdriver99

The term for what you're looking for is "Sharpe ratio". WIthout knowing what level of risk RH is taking on your porftolio, we cannot actually determine whether or not it is meeting its goal as an investment. For example, a traditional 60-40 VOO/BND portfolio will underperform the S&P 500 - but will perform in line with expectations per the Sharpe ratio.

IceHand41

When you say 85/15/5 is that VTI/VXUS/BND? I'm guessing that's an approximation since real life tends to be a little messier, and you mentioned some single stock pics. And what about shifting your "weight" from 60-40 to 90-10. Ratio of equities to ..what?

PomegranatePlenty110

I have, I’m not huge into the market, and kind of set it forget it. I was thinking 70% VTI, 20% VXUS and 10% BND.

Vegetable-Ad1512

Not an advisor you can beat most advisors by Putting 60% in VOO , 20% in VXUS and 20 % in BND and don’t touch it

taplar

I'm curious. Does anyone employ a long term strategy of holding something like a market ETF, along with a bond ETF and an information security ETF? Thinking about random investing things, I was looking at a back testing tool to see if you held VTI and BND, how much of VGT could you have historically held to have gotten the same returns. Wondering if anyone actually puts something like that into practice. Sorta an alternative to leverage to alter the over all risk level.

Odd-Guava9894

The issue IMO is that even if you aren't looking for growth there are now products that accomplish the job of being safe in a downturn more effectively than a generic bond allocation these days. If you are talking short term cash equivalents when you talk bonds, like SGOV, then I see the place for them, hell if you are talking about buying and holding individual bonds until expiration, they can make sense, but I don't think holding intermediate or long term bond funds as a hedge against downturns makes any sense at all these days, which is what most people end up doing when they hear they need to hold bonds. They are not uncorrelated enough to be a proper hedge, and not safe enough to justify the shit yields. If someone retiring just before COVID had gone all in on BND or God forbid TLT, because they heard bonds were safe in a downturn they'd be absolutely fucked. About the only situation where a large bond allocation makes sense to me is in a barbell strategy to offset some form of leveraged equity exposure, usually LEAPS options, and only short duration bonds even in that case.

Iniamyen

Investment elections will include SPY, BND, and DJT

sparkle_and_twist

Protection from SRR as you head into retirement. If you retired in 2007 with 100% stocks, no income, with 1.5 mil, and needed 50k a year to survive, in 2008 your portfolio would have dropped to 750k - 50k. It then took 5 more years to recover. So when the market finally started to come back you were left with 450k. Your portfolio dropped by 50% and you had 6 years withdrawing 50k from it at the bottom. I'm not a huge fan of bonds, but a mix of BND, cash, or short term bonds will help preserve capital in retirement if there is a crash. https://testfol.io/?s=81vEL3pCunn

TortugaTurtle47

1/3 in a HYSA and 2/3 in a brokerage account (50% BND and 50% SGOV).

Mitnek

It's because of the holdings of BND. What you are looking for is stripped bonds.

drummer820

As others have pointed out, they almost certainly didn’t go down DURING the acute phase of COVID in 2020. Bond prices move opposite with yield/interest rate, so when the Fed cut rates to zero and printed money, bonds and bond funds surged. If you are invested in speculative junk bonds, that’s not remotely the same thing as treasuries / BND / etc

Pristine_Berry1650

Ill have to check out BND, im only familiar with TLT and SHY

AndyShootsAndScores

Let me explain what I mean better. Look at the period Dec 31 2021 - Dec 31 2022, when S&P 500 had a major downturn. Let's compare returns of buying VOO vs BND vs a 52-week t-bill purchased in late Dec 2021 over the course of the year, accounting for dividends: VOO: **-18.06%** BND: **-13.144%** 52-week T-Bill: **+0.36%** I understand that you'd want to reinvest the T-bill in something after it matures (maybe buying either of the other funds at a comparative discount?). But after that year of time, to my eyes, holding BND wasn't really a hedge at all against an equity downturn compared to holding a T-Bill, or any other kind of guaranteed interest.

ConcentrateOk523

BND 10 year return is 1.51 percent, pretty pathetic.

bonghits96

> But my bond funds went down during COVID. They weren't uncorrelated. They went down *after* covid. If your bond funds went down *during* covid, when interest rates hit the lowest levels seen in decades, they were some weird bond funds or primarily invested in junk. BND, for example, hit its all-time high in July 2020.

BadMoonRosin

I don't think you understand what a bond or a bond fund are. The price of AGG or BND go up and down because value of existing bonds goes up and down as interest rates change. If you (or a fund) buys a bond when interest rates are 4%, and then rates climb to 5%, you can't just sell that bond to someone else without sweetening the deal (i.e. selling it for less than the prorated base price) to make up for the below-market interest the buyer will receive. Conversely, if you buy a bond when interest rates are 5%, and then sell it when rates are 4%, then you can sell it at a premium because the buyer will now receive above-market interest. Buying bonds directly "offers stability" only in the sense that you aren't even considering the possibility of selling that bond prior to maturity. You're just receiving your original 4% or 5% for the duration, and ignorance is bliss. But the actual book value of what you're holding is still going up and down, just as if it were in a bond fund.

DaveyParks200

Just give it up. You won’t convince them. Some people are just adamant on investing only in VT and BND forever, even starting in their 20s

PolitzaniaKing

I buy VTI and BND, rebalance every few years and play guitar.

1dirtbiker

I've been investing for 20 years, and am usually on my game. We all make mistakes. My position in QQQM and QQQ is very small compared to my total net worth, so I'm not as up on it as I clearly should be. I'm mostly invested in IVV, SCHD, and BND.

1dirtbiker

I rarely do trade. I buy and hold, and dollar cost average. My QQQM holdings are small, like under $50K. The vast majority of my investments are in IVV, BND, and SCHD.

Maximus77x

What would I do? I’d be firmly in the wealth accumulation stage. I’d be fully aggressive by going 100% stocks (or close to it). I’d shovel as much money as I could into a low-cost, broad-based index fund like VT until I started slowly adding BND as I got older and entered the wealth preservation phase.

datadogsoup

Too complicated. I doubt this mix would outperform VT + BND really. Probably purposefully to make it look complex. I would suggest selling it all out and yolo 0 dte SPY calls or no balls

Rare-Ad9392

I don't ask for anything from them. I have total trust, but yes as i've researched the last year, I realized that I'm paying on the high end. And would really stay with them if I was closer to 1 -1.2%. but thinking about just consolidation to a 3-Fund Structure: Total U.S. Stock Market ETF (like VTI) 60% International Stock ETF (like VXUS) 20% Total Bond ETF (like BND) 20% And do this myself and seek out a flat fee advisor yearly or as needed.

SurgicalClarity

Like others have said, these numbers just aren't realistic. I'd start with the /r/personalfinance flow chart. https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics Keep enough in checking to cover your monthly expenses (which I'm guessing are near zero since you're in high school) with a little cushion. Put the rest in a high yield savings account for now. Check bankrate.com for options but you should be able to get 3-3.5% at the moment. If you're not going to need the money for several years, you can consider investing. Once you have income from a job, you can consider a Roth IRA, or a taxable brokerage until then. You can open these accounts at a place like Vanguard or Fidelity. If you go the IRA route, consider a target date 2070 fund, or roll your own 3-fund portfolio (VTI, VXUS, BND). If you use a taxable brokerage, definitely don't do the target date fund as you'll be taxed on the capital gains distributions even if you don't sell.

snkscore

Well if the alternative proposed portfolio 60/40 then 40% bonds is a bigger bet than doing a 60/25/15. The main ETFs are mostly DBMF, CTA, and KMLM. DBMF attempts to mimic one of the main managed futures indexes, but it uses replication, trying to model and reverse engineer what the top managed futures hedge funds do but for much less expense ratio. [https://totalrealreturns.com/n/USSTOCKS,DBMF,BND](https://totalrealreturns.com/n/USSTOCKS,DBMF,BND) You can see when the COVID crash happens both bonds and managed futures don't move much and when we get the big 2022 drawdown with inflation stocks and bonds go down but DBMF goes up. If you did some rebalancing at some point you'd be coming out really well. Managed futures are not correlated with stocks or bonds, so this gives another asset type.

adiabatic_storm

I've always thought it interesting that risk adverse people are willing to accept a guaranteed bad outcome, instead of taking some low to moderate risk on something else that at least has a historical track record of success with an expected value much higher than the "safe" alternative. Like, yeah I get it, volatility is hard to stomach at times, especially in crashes or prolonged bear markets, but the irony is that if you stay committed to the higher volatility yet also higher expected value strategy long term, the strategy still significantly outperforms the "safe" one even after adjusting for a significant crash or correction. I mean look, if all you have to your name is $5K then there's a good argument for stashing that in an emergency fund / HYSA, but the idea of committing any real amount to money to guaranteed demise (via slow but insidious and continuous devaluation resulting from inflation) is clinically insane. You want time on your side, not the other way around. $10K invested in BND on April 10, 2007 is now worth $17,700 today. $10K invested in VTI in April 10, 2007 is now worth $71,622 today. (And that's after riding out the 2008 crash and everything else that has happened since.) The stock market could crash 70% tomorrow and you'd still have more money from the original investment in VTI than BND. Which begs the question: What's really more risky, anyways? I think we have to measure risk not just as potential for sudden downside corrections, but also in terms of opportunity cost on the way up. Those losses are just as real, you just don't see them like you do a direct loss, so it's easier to miss.

FoggyFoggyFoggy

Below is my all equities Roth IRA. (I have a separate, more conservative, VTI-VXUS-BND-BNDX tax-deferred account.) SPMO 45% VEA 35% GOOGL 10% RY 10% What U.S. equity ETF would you add to this Roth IRA?

ShittyUsernane1222

which 3 letter government agencies are represented the most in wsb (pick 1 from the list) ? 1. CIA (US) 2. NSA(US) 3. FBI (US) 4. DIA (US) 5. NGA(US) 6. FSB (Russia) 7. MSS (China) 8. KGB (Belarus) 9. MI6 (UK) 10. MI5 (UK) 11. ICE (US) 12. GCHQ (UK) 13. BND (germany) 14. Verfassungsschutz (Germany) 15. Other

Prudent-Corgi3793

XRT -7.63% total returns over last 5 years. Here are some bagholder stocks and ETFs that have outperformed over the same time period. NVO +16.25%, F +28.69%, GM +33.74%, SBUX -3.98%, BND -0.00%.

Technical_Formal72

No more than I would be wasting my money on a personal trainer or FA. A financial advisor won’t magically make me more money. A personal trainer doesn’t magically make me fit. If you’re too lazy to do some basic research on a long-term investment strategies like VT, VTI/VXUS (optionally BND), or a TDF ect. and don’t have the discipline to stick to that strategy then sure go blow some money on a money babysitter. But I would only suggest that to someone who completely lacked the ability to think for themselves. Investing is so easy and convenient today, I see no real argument for an FA unless you are an extremely high NW individual. A private chef on the other hand would be nice though haha

bofoshow51

I highly recommend the [Financial Order of Operations](https://moneyguy.com/guide/foo/#7-hyperaccumulation) for not just investing but general financial literacy and priority. It’s great if you are investing aggressively and getting a 10% return, it’s bad if you don’t first pay off your credit card debt with 25% interest so you’re losing more money than you’re growing, or you didn’t first build an emergency fund to handle the little surprise expenses life throws you and you have to pull money out of your investments. In terms of what way to actually invest, I highly recommend the [3 fund portfolio](https://www.optimizedportfolio.com/bogleheads-3-fund-portfolio/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=10886055113&gbraid=0AAAAACPYnC6gFzivnN-AeQgEAzjrRXjev&gclid=Cj0KCQjwio_RBhDMARIsAJPveNPg67JDp3ImRsx7BkqroO_gAI2xRVosB4Epp3u9It3_7MtQ6_RMS8caApl5EALw_wcB) for maximum simplicity, maximum success, and minimum worry/effort. Buy low-cost broad market index funds, get one each for US stock market + international stock market + bond market, ideal funds are VTI/VOO/SPY + VXUS + BND/GOVT/VGIT or even simpler VT (total world so US and international together) + bonds. When you’re young you want way more stock index funds than bond index funds in your portfolio, for reference I am a 95/5 ratio of stocks to bonds and 29yo, and I’d be 100% stock if not for my 401k target date fund having a small portion of bonds anyway. When you are near retirement, about 10-15 years away, you adjust your ratio more to bonds. It’s preference what that retirement ratio will be, I plan to go to about 75/25 or maybe 80/20 depending on how I feel my risk tolerance is in my old age. Hope that all helps!

the_shaggy_DA

VTI 50%, VXUS 45%, and BND 5%, then delete the app and never think about this wretched market for at least the next two decades

neonam11

Take some of your profits and put them into VTI/VXUS/BND and chill.

bad_detectiv3

my strategy if I ever sell my stake is to rotate into SGOV and BND \[I read about buying in bonds yesterday\] to hedge against recession.

Serious_Tree31

It’s not letting me add picture Current ETF s are : SCHD SPHQ SCHD BND VOO VWO

shantired

BND is a bond fund from vanguard, its a total market ETF. It’s not the best, but has a decent return. If you’re going to invest in VOO and BND, then it’s best to do it by opening an account with Vanguard. They have a clunky website but that also helps them keep their expense ratios low. For HYSA, my favorite is Amex just because I have other credit card products with them. There’s a bunch of others that you can research.

Mshepard24

This is the hand holding talk to me like a idiot reply I needed. Thank you good sir or ma'am. Whats the deal with the BND? Also what is the best HYSA?

shantired

The limit for zero tax is 250K if you’re unmarried and living in the same house for 5 years, which is your case. No taxes on 160K and 9 years. Here’s one way to invest: 35K in HYSA 85K in VOO or SPY or FXAIX (all are very similar). This is basically investing in pure American capitalism. 40K in BND or equivalent. This is a bond fund that you can use to buy more stocks or funds when the market is down (remember the adage: you make money when there’s blood on the streets). I would suggest that you put all your money into a HYSA right now and then invest about 10-20% every month into the 2 funds to dollar cost average (DCA).

Machine8851

BND is not good though

DrakeStone

Vti, Vxus and BND, so endorse.

tk421tech

Ok so under $20k Switched it to VOO 70% VXUS 20% and BND -> APPL / plan to get 10 total shares and leave alone for 10 yrs.

Puzzleheaded-Art1524

After an emergency fund (3 - 6 months of expenses), I have another bucket for things I plan to buy in the future. Whether it's home projects (i.e. replace a central air unit) or buy a next car, or something like that - and I sell stock to put into those buckets, so that the money is available when I need it (rather than keeping it in stocks and having a market correction right when I need the money. As others have said, I'm a boglehead - so the bulk of my holdings are in 3 funds (ITOT (Domestic Equities), IXUS (International Equities) and BND (Bonds). So I don't really worry about when to sell individual stocks. I just periodically rebalance to make sure that my overall portfolio allocation is what I intend it to be. For the other buckets (things I plan to buy in the next 5 years, I'll either use CD ladders or bond funds so that those are still earning money, but aren't subject to market downturns at the time I need the money. Boring, I know - but just the way I like it.

witchesbrewm

Whatever diversified ETF of fund you buy, you will always have a lot of tech. You could sell everything and buy a 60% VT and 40% BND or something like that. In Canada we have a lot of asset allocation ETFs (VBAL, XEQT, etc), but for some reason I can’t find a US equivalent.

PartsSprout

Ok that makes a lot more sense and that is the way to do it IMO. BND, TIPS, and similar long and intermediate bond funds are just abysmal for portfolios over the last decade.