Tag Archives: Bonds

Business

Interest Rate Time Bomb May Kill Hedge Funds

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As March began, hedge funds placed one of their biggest bets of all time. It may be their undoing.

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Traders placed the largest bet in history on increasing short term interest rates. But as a banking crisis spreads, rates may fall, exposing them to huge losses.

From a report out this morning in Reuters:

Hedge funds face huge losses on their record bet that the Fed will go full steam ahead with its aggressive interest rate-raising campaign, after some of the most abrupt and violent swings in U.S. rates and bond market pricing in living memory.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) data shows that speculators held the largest ever net short position in three-month SOFR rate futures in the week ending March 7, only a few weeks after amassing a record short position in two-year Treasuries futures.

Now, their trade is deeply underwater:

Implied rates then plunged as much as 200 basis points in a week as traders drastically redrew their Fed outlook. The two-year Treasury yield posted its biggest fall since the Black Monday crash of 1987, and U.S. bond market volatility surged the most since Lehman’s collapse.

Many funds have already lost 10% of their assets or more so far this month. And as bank after bank fails, the bleeding may get even worse.

A month ago, most of us thought the Federal Reserve would keep raising rates. Inflation was the priority.

Now, with a cascade of bank failures, the Fed may cut rates to stop the crisis. Markets are predicting the Fed will lower rates this summer.

Already, hedge funds are going bust.

Adam Levinson’s Graticule Asia lost 25% this year, most of it in a few days after the SVB collapse. The fund has closed its doors.

As an investor, sometimes I think I know where markets are heading. But I never put too many eggs in one basket.

I’m playing with my own money. But most hedge funds aren’t.

And it’s not hard to tell.

What do you think will happen to these funds?

Leave a comment and let me know!

More on markets:

Executives Dumped Shares Shortly Before First Republic Rescue

SVB Fallout

Goldman Sachs Under Federal Investigation

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This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

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Business

As Fed Rates Peak, Are Markets Ready to Take Off?

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In 2022, the Fed tightened its vice grip until we squealed. But as interest rates peak this year, markets are in a position for serious growth.

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It stands to reason: if someone is hitting you with a stick, the pain diminishes when they stop hitting you. To confirm this, I looked at four periods of peak interest rates from 1981 to today.

In most cases, markets jumped significantly within a year after the federal funds rate peaked.

Let’s dig into some examples….

Paul Volcker’s Hammer

Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker took interest rates to eyewatering levels in 1981. They peaked at 19% that summer, a far cry from today’s 4.5%.

Markets continued to fall for about a year.

But then, something amazing happened. Volcker crushed inflation and stocks rocketed upward for almost 20 years.

A Stake Through Inflation’s Heart

Like the undead, inflation rose again in 1989. Volcker pushed rates back up to 10% by April, ramming a stake through its cold, black heart.

Markets jumped shortly after, rising about 16% in the next year.

The Go-Go 90’s

After falling to a low of 3% in 1993, the Fed hiked rates to a peak of 6% in the spring of 1995. Chairman Alan Greenspan aimed to cool a red-hot economy and prevent inflation.

Markets ignored him. Stocks went vertical, more than doubling in 4 years.

The Financial Crisis

By the mid-2000’s, the real estate market was out of control. The Federal Reserve took rates from a rock-bottom 1% to 5% by the summer of 2007.

This time, it really was different.

There was no quick rebound even as the Fed took rates to zero. In fact, it took over 5 years for stocks to recover from the financial crisis.

The financial crisis stands out as the worst since the Great Depression. Last year’s S&P 500 return of -18% doesn’t compare to the Great Recession’s -48% bloodbath.

In all, once rates peak, we usually see markets begin to climb in 12 months or less.

As companies look at a future of stable or declining rates, they’re more comfortable borrowing money and making investments. If rates peak mid-year as analysts project, I expect to see markets jump by the end of 2023.

What do you think 2023 holds for markets? Leave a comment at the bottom and let me know!

More on markets:

Tiger Global Losing $185 Million a Day

Is SBF Laundering Money As We Speak?

Why Crypto is Still Massively Overvalued

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This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

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If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

Misfits Market

I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

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Photo: “Governor Jerome Powell speaks at Brookings panel, ‘Are there structural issues in U.S. bond markets?’” by BrookingsInst is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Business

Let’s Make Our Own Index Fund!

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The Problem

Bonds are a big part of many investors’ portfolios. But yields today are close to nonexistent.

Since 2009, rates have been at or below the rate of inflation. Two bond funds I own pay 1.88% and 1.45% respectively.

Inflation is currently running at about 4.8%. This means I’m paying about 2.9-3.4% per year after inflation for the privilege of owning these funds.

Not fun, right?

An Unlikely Solution

So I’ve been exploring building a portfolio of high dividend stocks to replace the bonds and provide income. The stocks I’m interested in have paid high dividends for decades straight.

They represent the highest payors amongst the Dividend Aristocrats. Call them the Dividend Royals.

What if I had my own index fund of these companies? Each stock could be automatically weighted in the portfolio based on its market cap.

So, since Exxon Mobil has a much larger market cap than Federal Realty Investment Trust, for example, it would be a proportionately larger piece of the index fund.

A sophisticated solution could even automatically rebalance the fund on a regular schedule. This would keep the stocks in correct proportion to each other.

But who can provide such a service?

The Hunt

Not many companies, it turns out. Here are the biggest providers of “direct indexing”, or DIY index funds, per Bloomberg:

Vanguard also has such an offering via its recent acquisition of Just Invest.

I’ve requested demos from Vanguard, Parametric (part of Morgan Stanley), and Aperio (part of BlackRock). If I see anything good, I’ll report back!

There’s also an interesting offering from Interactive Brokers called BasketTrader. While I didn’t have the time to dig deep into it today, it looks like it may provide a solid tool for direct indexing.

Do you know a good direct indexing provider? Please leave a comment at the bottom.

There will be no blog on Monday or Tuesday. An old friend is coming to visit!

See you on Wednesday. Have a great weekend everyone!

More on markets:

How Did High Dividend Stocks Perform In the Last Crash?

Should Anyone Own Bonds?

Starting a Financial Plan from 0

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Amazon Business American Express Card

You already shop on Amazon. Why not save $100?

If you’re approved for this card, you get a $100 Amazon gift card. You also get up to 5% back on Amazon and Whole Foods purchases, 2% on restaurants/gas stations/cell phone bills, and 1% everywhere else.

Best of all: No fee!

Fundrise

This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been good so far. More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. With their 1% management fee, this could save you $250 on a $100,000 account.

Misfits Market

My wife and I have gotten organic produce shipped to our house by Misfits for over a year. It’s never once disappointed me. Every fruit and vegetable is super fresh and packed with flavor. I thought radishes were cold, tasteless little lumps at salad bars until I tried theirs! They’re peppery, colorful and crunchy! I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $10 on your first order. 

Business

Where Can We Hide in a Financial Crisis?

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Markets are booming today, but just 18 months ago, things looked like this:

Ouch.

I lost about 22% of my portfolio in less than five weeks. It certainly made life interesting.

Today, markets sit near all time highs and jobs go begging. It’s a far cry from the darkest days of the COVID disaster.

But the next financial crisis is coming. It could be in a month, a year, or ten years. But as investors, we need to be prepared.

One of the best ways to protect ourselves is to own assets that are not correlated with stocks. That way, when the market is falling off a cliff, a part of our portfolio is preserved.

People often look to overseas stocks or real estate to diversify. I own those myself. But although they can deliver nice returns, they are highly correlated with US stocks.

Global stocks have a 0.97 correlation with the S&P 500, a near perfect match. Even Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) show a very strong correlation (0.70).

Investment grade bonds (-0.06) and cash (-0.17) show low correlations with stocks. But the yield to maturity on that Bloomberg investment grade bond index is just 1.42%, way below inflation. And cash in a bank account returns about enough to buy a candy bar at the end of the year.

So where do we go? Here are some options:

Litigation Finance

This arcane corner of the financial world gives plaintiffs and lawyers money to sue people. The lawsuits usually involve a small company suing a larger one.

Returns can be eye popping. But it’s difficult for those of us who aren’t lawyers to understand what we’re investing in. Are these good cases likely to win? Or suckers’ bets?

It probably only makes sense as a small portion of a portfolio, at most. And minimum investments can be high, making it less attractive to many.

Farmland

Ya gotta eat, right?

New platforms have sprung up to help people invest directly in farmland. Returns can exceed those of stocks, and correlation with US stocks is almost nonexistent (-0.05).

This could be an attractive area, but it’s quite unfamiliar to me, and probably to most other investors. I’d have to research it a lot more before jumping in.

Dividend Aristocrats

Dividend Aristocrats are blue chip stocks that have increased their dividends every year for at least 25 years. They’re household names like Coca-Cola, Exxon, and IBM.

They generally have higher returns than the S&P 500 with lower volatility. That’s a win-win.

But they’re highly correlated with the rest of the index (0.9). That said, they’re still better than overseas stocks in this respect, and not dissimilar to real estate.

Wrap Up

We have some interesting options for keeping our portfolios safer in the next bear market while preserving yields today. I encourage you to dig deeper into your favorite categories.

What asset classes do you favor in a crisis? Let me know in the comments at the very bottom.

More on markets:

Will Evergrande Spark a Global Financial Crisis?

Should Anyone Own Bonds?

How Solana Could Wipe Out Visa and MasterCard

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If you’re approved for this card, you get a $100 Amazon gift card. You also get up to 5% back on Amazon and Whole Foods purchases, 2% on restaurants/gas stations/cell phone bills, and 1% everywhere else.

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Fundrise

This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been good so far. More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. With their 1% management fee, this could save you $250 on a $100,000 account.

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My wife and I have gotten organic produce shipped to our house by Misfits for over a year. It’s never once disappointed me. Every fruit and vegetable is super fresh and packed with flavor. I thought radishes were cold, tasteless little lumps at salad bars until I tried theirs! They’re peppery, colorful and crunchy! I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $10 on your first order.

Business

Should Anyone Own Bonds?

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I used to love bonds. Especially government bonds. Guaranteed income, easy liquidity, and stability in a crisis.

What’s not to like?

But my old flame hasn’t done much for me lately. And I’m not the only one.

The Problem

Bonds have hovered at or below the rate of inflation since 2009:

Just barely keeping up with inflation might be enough, given that I have much riskier positions in stocks, real estate, and tech startups.

But if an investment pays a yield below the rate of inflation, you’re essentially paying someone to hold onto your money. Instead of getting even a modest return, you lose a little of your cash every year, like clockwork.

Today, I own long term treasury bonds and medium term treasury and mortgage bonds. The long term bonds pay 1.73%, and come with a big risk of decline when interest rates increase. Which they’re just about bound to do, given that that they’re are sitting near 0.

The shorter duration bonds pay even less: 1.28%.

What Kind of Return Do We Need to Keep Up With Inflation?

Recent inflation numbers have been scary: over 5% a year. But, if we look at the longer run averages, the picture brightens a little.

Over the last 20 years, inflation has averaged 2.16%. Over the last 10 years, the figure is 1.89%.

I don’t know how long the sudden higher inflation of the last couple of months will last. But it appears that a floor for a return that will keep up for inflation is no less than 2%.

Where Can We Get Our 2%?

The attractive features of government bonds are liquidity, stability, and a modest income. Let’s review a few alternatives, with that in mind:

1) Corporate bonds. Returns aren’t much better than government bonds, at around 1.7%.

2) Fundrise. Love it, but not a good substitute for bonds. Real estate development just isn’t as stable. It’s not very liquid either. However, returns are good. I’ve notched around 7% since I started investing.

3) Single Premium Immediate Annuities. A rather exotic choice. Rates can be good at around 3.5% in some cases. And the income is guaranteed. But they’re not very liquid: there’s a 10% IRS penalty for withdrawal before age 59.5. But if you’re older, they could work well.

4) Dividend Aristocrats. These aren’t just any high dividend stocks. These have a history of paying higher dividends every year for at least 25 years. That’s a surer bet than many stocks with even higher dividends, because those huge payouts may not last.

The yield on some of these large, stable companies is impressive:

ExxonMobil: 6.5%

Chevron: 5.5%

IBM: 4.8%

Consolidated Edison: 4.2%

Of course, the stock prices could go down.

But if you’re buying for income, and the company is large and stable and has increased its dividend of decades on end, you don’t care. You just collect your check and head to the golf course.

What’s more, you can buy a basket of these stocks, rather than just one, insulating yourself from the chance that one of them cuts its dividend.

Wrap Up

Dividend Aristocrats seem like one of the best options to replace the income bonds no longer offer. They are also less likely to fall with higher interest rates.

What do you think the best option is? Leave a comment at the very bottom of the page and let me know! I just might use your idea. 🙂

More on investing:

What Does the Pandemic Mean for Real Estate Investments?

Why I Just Invested in EyeRate, the Best Online Review Tool

What I Learned From an Investor Who Turned $100,000 into $100,000,000

Photo: “Governor Jerome Powell speaks at Brookings panel, ‘Are there structural issues in U.S. bond markets?'” by BrookingsInst is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

If you found this post interesting, please share it on Twitter/Reddit/etc. using the buttons at the bottom of the page. This helps more people find the blog! 

Save Money on Stuff I Use:

Amazon Business American Express Card

You already shop on Amazon. Why not save $100?

If you’re approved for this card, you get a $100 Amazon gift card. You also get up to 5% back on Amazon and Whole Foods purchases, 2% on restaurants/gas stations/cell phone bills, and 1% everywhere else.

Best of all: No fee!

Fundrise

This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been good so far. More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. With their 1% management fee, this could save you $250 on a $100,000 account.

iHerb

The only place I buy vitamins and supplements. I recently placed an order and received it in less than 48 hours with free shipping! I compared the prices and they were lower than Amazon. I also love how they test a lot of the vitamins so that you know you’re getting what the label says. This isn’t always the case with supplements.

Use this link to save 5%! 

Misfits Market

My wife and I have gotten organic produce shipped to our house by Misfits for over a year. It’s never once disappointed me. Every fruit and vegetable is super fresh and packed with flavor. I thought radishes were cold, tasteless little lumps at salad bars until I tried theirs! They’re peppery, colorful and crunchy! I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $10 on your first order. 

Business

The Tiny Village That Beat the Great Depression

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Nestled in the Austrian Alps is the tiny village of Worgl. In 1932, as the world economy was in the depths of the Great Depression, Worgl too had fallen on hard times:

The Great Depression was in full swing and of its population of nearly 5000, a third were jobless, and about 200 families were bankrupt. The situation was desperate. The town would try anything.

What followed was one of the most radical economic experiments in history. The town created a new form of money. It was a lot like the standard Austrian schilling it replaced, except its value dropped by 1% every month. In a year, you’d have just 88.64 left of every 100 schillings.

This gave residents a strong incentive to stop hoarding currency, a natural reaction to a scary economic climate:

The speed that money changed hands (14 times higher than the national schilling) helped keep local businesses afloat and, in time, brought back the town’s lost jobs.

Soon, the town went from 1/3 jobless to full employment. Tax revenues boomed as people paid their bills in the new currency before it lost its value.

Worgl’s success attracted attention from its neighbors:

Things looked up for Worgl and [Mayor] Unterguggenberger. The town did so well that six neighbouring villages successfully copied the system and over 200 grew an interest in following suit.

Ultimately, the central bank shut down this experiment in a local currency. Shortly thereafter, unemployment shot right back up to where it was before Worgl’s mayor made this bold move to save his town.

It makes sense that Worgl would’ve rocketed ahead of nearby villages. Worgl essentially had (very) negative interest rates and a far more accomodative monetary policy than its neighbors.

Today too, lowering interest rates, even below zero, is a commonly used tactic to stimulate economic activity. The US Federal Reserve lowered interest rates substantially at the beginning of the COVID crisis, and Japan and much of Europe has had negative rates for years.

But despite the success of Worgl, the results of negative rates today are mixed. Negative rates might encourage consumers to spend, but they could also discourage banks from lending. After all, who wants to lend when you might have to pay for the privilege!

Worgl remains an interesting footnote to monetary policy. Whatever the applications to today may be, I applaud the bravery of those villagers who took a radical step to try to save their home.

For more on markets and the economy, check out these posts:

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Business

Australia Takes the Lead As Governments Move to Reign in Interest Rates

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Government bond yields are increasing in many countries, including the US. Australia is already taking action. Europe and Japan also appear to be close:

This morning, Australian three-year government bond yields reached as high as 0.15% at the market open, far above the 0.1% ceiling established by the Reserve Bank of Australia last November under its yield curve control policy.  The RBA accordingly pledged to buy up to A$3 billion ($2.3 billion) in three-year paper in an unscheduled operation just one day after undertaking the largest purchases since March, successfully pushing yields back down towards that 0.1% bogey by day’s end.  

In a report predicting that the RBA will wait until July before deciding whether to tweak its existing policies, Andrew Boak, Goldman Sachs chief economist for Australia and New Zealand, noted yesterday that “there are no modern day precedents for a central bank exiting yield curve control.” 

A similar struggle is underway in the Land of the Rising Sun.  Japan, which instituted yield curve control back in 2016 with a targeted 0% yield on the 10-year government bond, is now facing a test of its resolve:  The yield on 10-year government debt reached 0.175% this morning, the highest since the debut of that program.  “I want you to understand that we aren’t aiming to raise our target from around 0%,” BOJ governor Haruhiko Kuroda declared in an address to parliament this morning, a message surely intended for Mr. Market as well. 

Meanwhile, a scaled-down bond selloff on the Old Continent looks to spur the powers that be to further impose their will on the market. Yesterday, German 10-year yields reached minus 0.23%, near a one-year high and up from minus 0.53% one month earlier, three days after ECB president Christine Lagarde declared she is “closely monitoring the evolution of longer-term nominal bond yields.”  

In light of that dizzying ascent to minus 0.23%, one of her colleagues appears ready for action. “In my view, there is an unwarranted tightening of bond yields, so it would perhaps be desirable for the ECB to accelerate the pace of [asset] purchases to ensure favorable financing conditions during the pandemic,” Greek central bank governor Yannis Stournaras told Reuters this afternoon.

More here (see the Feb 26 post).

Higher interest rates on government bonds tend to lead to higher interest rates throughout the economy. This can be a problem for stocks, since it can make it more expensive for companies to borrow to fund expansion, etc. It can also make bonds more attractive compared to stocks, which hurts the stock market.

If we see sustained upward pressure on US rates, I expect to see the US follow Australia and try to get the rates back down.

For more on interest rates on markets, check out these posts:

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Business

Forget GameStop, Treasury Yields Are The Thing to Watch

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Treasury bonds have been falling hard lately. Their interest rates are up significantly as a result:

The yield on the 10-year note, a bellwether for borrowing costs on everything from mortgages to corporate loans, has jumped to near 1.5% from around 1% in a matter of weeks, lifted by increased expectations that vaccines and government stimulus efforts will accelerate growth and inflation.

And the sell-off is making its way into the stock market today:

The sell-off in the bond market ricocheted into equities, pushing the broad S&P 500 down 2.3 per cent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite down 3.3 per cent by afternoon on Wall Street.

A lot of this is the side effect of something good: people are getting vaccinated, new vaccines are coming, and economic stimulus could boost the economy further. That picture is leading investors to expect greater economic growth in the future, along with greater inflation (see the Feb 22 post):

Signs of a renewed economic boom, in tandem with pockets of price pressure, color that move in rates. Bianco Research notes today that Wall Street economists now expect U.S. real GDP growth of nearly 5% this year

But higher rates on Treasury bonds could affect other markets negatively in several ways:

  • Higher Treasury yields tend to mean higher rates in other areas. This could make it more expensive for companies to borrow to fund expansion, etc. That would hurt their shares.
  • If Treasuries offer more interest, that makes stocks less attractive by comparison.
  • Treasury yields, especially the 10 year note, tend to drive mortgage rates. Higher mortgage rates mean a weaker real estate market.

Nonetheless, the Fed remains committed to low interest rates and a loose monetary policy:

In his remarks to the House Financial Services Committee, [Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome] Powell said it could take more than three years before inflation reached the Fed’s target of 2%. That helped to reiterate the message that the central bank was in no rush to pare back on stimulus anytime soon, Deutsche’s Reid said.

I think that if rates spike too high, Powell will probably get the Fed in there buying lots of bonds (with printed money, if necessary) to get the rates back down. He doesn’t want to see higher rates derailing the economic recovery.

A slower rate rise may be less problematic:

“If it is stable and steady, it is easier for equities to digest,” O’Rourke said in an interview. “A quick spike has the potential to create a shock.”

Overall, this situation concerns me and it’s one I’m going to watch. But I am pretty confident that Powell will put a stop to extreme increases in Treasury yields.

For more on recent developments in financial markets, check out these posts:

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Photo: “Jerome H. Powell, governor of the Federal Reserve Board, discusses how markets currently function” by BrookingsInst is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Business

This One Trend is Driving Every Financial Market

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Regardless of which market we look at, we see a similar trend: skyrocketing prices since the beginning of the pandemic. You can see this in the S&P 500, a broad measure of stocks:

In commodities:

In the increase in real estate prices and the corresponding decrease in capitalization rates (this chart is from Dallas…see similar trends in other cities in the research papers linked in this post):

And even in Treasury bonds (recall that the yield moves in the opposite direction from the price, so a lower yield means a higher price):

Why are all these markets looking the same? The likeliest cause is a huge jump in the money supply. The Federal Reserve has aggressively printed money since the beginning of the pandemic, looking to counter the seismic economic shock. I think this is probably appropriate. In any case, the effect is unmistakable, however you measure money supply.

Here’s how the “monetary base,” or “the sum of currency in circulation and reserve balances (deposits held by banks and other depository institutions in their accounts at the Federal Reserve),” has expanded:

If you look at another definition of the money supply, M1 (“the sum of currency held by the public and transaction deposits at depository institutions”), it looks like this:

And if you broaden your definition of money supply to M2 (“M1 plus savings deposits, small-denomination time deposits (those issued in amounts of less than $100,000), and retail money market mutual fund shares”), you see the same familiar pattern:

Whichever way you slice it, there’s a lot more money out there than there used to be. That money can be used to bid up stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities, bitcoin, Gamestop, or whatever you like.

There is some debate in the literature about whether you can draw a correlation between the money supply and increasing stock prices. This study sounds a cautionary note:

future profits may not change, if interest rates decline at the same time that demand for firms’ products, and thus their sales, decline.

This could be relevant for companies that can’t deliver their products in a contactless manner. But companies that can have been thriving.

In all, it appears that the massive increase in the money supply is driving financial markets of every stripe in one direction: up. Until the Fed changes policy, I suspect the bias is likely to be toward buoyant markets, especially with vaccines coming on line and the pandemic’s end in sight.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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Photo: “Governor Jerome Powell speaks at Brookings panel, ‘Are there structural issues in U.S. bond markets?'” by BrookingsInst is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Business

My View on Markets in 2021

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My main business is investment, and some recent developments have gotten me thinking about where markets are headed this year. An end to the pandemic by Q2 2021 is predicted by multiple models (here and here). We’ve seen a substantial increase in personal income in 2020, largely due to the CARES Act. Much of that was saved and might fund consumption in 2021. More stimulus is likely forthcoming from the new administration and a Democratic Congress.

The combination of an end to the pandemic, increased personal income/saving/pent up demand, and further stimulus seems to set up a great scenario for stocks this year.

Meanwhile, Treasury yields dropped substantially in 2020 despite massive stimulus (and thus borrowing). The same may not occur this year, but suffice it to say the Treasury market seems to be able to absorb quite a lot of new issuance (see page 3 of this document).

My investments are heavily weighted toward equities, and I am expecting a good year. Perhaps we’ll revisit this in a year and see if I was right!