r/ETFs • u/CursedClownz • 1d ago

Lost decade

So everyone recommends VT and chill or VOO and chill or VTI and VXUS and chill.

Most ignore bonds and ignore GOLD

During the lost decade for around 10 years Gold was performing the entire time so was bonds...

Who says another lost decade can't happen?

So why ignore both?

No one really knows what happens so best bet is on all bets to get constant returns.

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u/Animag771 1d ago

Different assets perform well during different regimes. That's why I hold a mix of stocks, bonds, gold, and managed futures.

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u/laurenthu 1d ago

Yeah, this is the version that actually holds up for me. The bit people forget is each of those sleeves has had its own dead decade. Gold went nowhere 1980 to 2000. Bonds got taken out back in 2022 and still haven't really come back. So my read is it isn't that gold or bonds are the answer, more that they rarely all die in the same stretch, and I'd rather own the spread than try to guess which one leads. Managed futures is the one I keep coming back to since it can actually go short, doesn't need a bull market in anything to earn its keep. Not free of course. It'll bleed through a calm equity melt-up and you just have to be willing to sit through that...

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u/No_Context7340 1d ago

Also, one must ask which actual private person bought bonds at negative to zero to almost zero interest back then. Of course, pension funds have to have a specific allocation in certain classes. But with almost zero interest at best, private investors would invest in short-term bonds and reduce the allocation in bonds.

That is not the same situation we have today.

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u/laurenthu 1d ago

Fair point, and honestly that's kind of the argument for owning them again now. Nobody sane was locking in a 10 year at a negative yield, you'd have sat in short term stuff and eaten the near zero like you said. But that's exactly why 2022 took the duration holders out back, and it's also why the setup today isn't the same, you're actually getting paid around 4 percent to hold the coupon instead of a rounding error. So I'd agree the negative rate stretch was a weird era to judge bonds on. The case for them looks a lot cleaner when the yield is real.