FOR MANY INVESTORS, talking about bonds is about as interesting as watching paint dry. They aren’t nearly as interesting as stocks. But if you have a portion of your portfolio allocated to bonds, or plan to, it’s a topic worth some discussion.
The bond market is actually much larger and much more diverse than the stock market. For most investors, though, there are just a few types of bonds to consider. We can examine each in turn:
Total Bond Market
Perhaps the most well known type of bond investment is a total-market fund.

The secret is revealed at the end.

TIME VALUE OF MONEY, asset class, diversification, dollar-cost averaging: This is the language of investment professionals. But it isn’t the language of everyday Americans, including those saving for retirement in their employer’s 401(k) plan.
Trust me, I know. During my nearly 30 years overseeing 401(k) plans, including providing financial education to participants, it became clear to me that using such plans as intended wasn’t easy for most people.

We often hear that we are a consumer driven economy, with estimates that consumer spending provides as much as 70% of GDP. I read a recent article by Ben Carlson that indicated that, at least for this year, Big Tech’s capital expenditure spending on AI is approaching a similar level. The Bloomberg Magnificent 7 Total Return Index (I had no idea this existed) is up about 39% over the past year, compared to about 19% for the S&P 500.

Since Trump’s return as POTUS everyone is inundated with the news about Trump’s tariffs on just about every country in the world. His reasoning is that other counties have always taken advantage of the USA, and it is time that the USA rights the imbalance of trade.  He has said that he has always believed in tariffs, harking back to before 1913 when income tax was implemented. Of course, any thinking person would know that these tariffs are paid by the importers,

The Congressional Budget Office (OMB), the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA), the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) all use quite sophisticated forms of a spreadsheet and they all come up with different projections for debt, deficits, GDP and inflation, etc. … because they use different assumptions. 
See, I told you so, those darn spreadsheets will find any answer you like.😱😁

EARLIER THIS SUMMER, Congress passed the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act—GENIUS, for short. This sounds obscure, but it’s a story worth following. The GENIUS Act’s purpose is to promote the growth of—and to regulate—a new type of financial instrument known as a stablecoin.
What’s a stablecoin? It’s similar to a cryptocurrency but differs in one important way: Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have exhibited wide price swings. That makes them interesting to investors but less-than-useful as currencies for everyday transactions.

In a recent Morningstar article, the author pointed out a few things.
“It feels like the economy has gone through three cycles in the past six years. The future looks very messy and uncertain, yet there’s no shortage of pundits that claim to know what will happen tomorrow.
But predicting the short-term direction of the economy has always been that way. ….
The media and investors alike are subject to recency bias: the tendency to place more emphasis on recent news and events than on older circumstances.

Something in the news recently caught my notice and has me wondering. I want to emphasize that I’m not trying to be political, and I would be disappointed if any comments were. As you may know, I’m not even from your country; I’m Irish and live in the UK. So the nuance is beyond me. All that aside, do you think the recent dismissal of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics should cause me any concern about the future accuracy of US economic data sources?

STOCK MARKET Investing requires a near superhuman ability to withstand pain. That’s the conclusion of a recent report by investment researcher Michael Mauboussin.
Mauboussin surveyed all stocks trading on U.S. exchanges over a 40-year period, between 1985 and 2024. He found that the median stock experienced a decline of 85% at one point or another. Worse yet, more than half of these stocks never fully recouped their losses. The median stock recovered to just 90% of its prior high-water mark.

I prepared this article  as “homework” for a personal finance elective at a college-preparatory high school I might be contributing to in the Fall. Perhaps it would be helpful to parents whose kids are smitten with the Magnificent 7 or crypto.
After a stock market decline, people may perceive more risk than before, when the decline may have taken some of the risk out of the market.
—Robert Shiller
The investor’s chief problem—and even his worst enemy—is himself.

I have an exasperating and ever-increasing case of double FOMOitis. Today’s stretched stock market valuations have given me a case of fear of missing out (FOMO) for not selling and locking in assured gains – sensible rebalancing theory suggests that we should all be selling on the way up. On the other hand, I have FOMO even considering selling because of the potential opportunity cost of not capturing further gains in a market with clear upward momentum – sensible investing theory (and Jonathan recently) suggests that we should ride the winners while they are hot.

A PLANE’S ALTIMETER measures the airplane’s altitude. It’s a critical instrument—so important, in fact, that planes are typically outfitted with two. That’s for redundancy, in case one fails. In addition, because different altimeters work better in different conditions, the two readings offer pilots multiple points of reference.
I was speaking recently with a retired pilot, who explained this to me and asked how he could apply the notion of redundancy to his finances. It was a good question,

When news on the radio says that a given investment instrument’s price is up or down by some stated percentage or monetary amount, but it doesn’t say what that’s compared to, is there a convention defining this? For example, do they mean a year ago, a day ago, a minute ago, since the last opening or closing, or since some event that is in the news about that instrument, such as a board choosing a new company president?

Today Morningstar released a very interesting article exploring how a 60/40 portfolio diversification limits losses during market declines. Of note is the fact that due to the 2022 bond market swoon this portfolio has still not fully recovered.
You can read the article here:
150 Years of Stock and Bond Market Crashes: How the 60/40 Portfolio Held Up | Morningstar
Here are some highlights:
There have been 19 bear markets for stocks and three bear markets for bonds over the past 150 years—that is,

Sometimes, the big picture that frames your life can just happen without much thought, mostly by luck. I guess not everyone who has good fortune like this will admit anything other than hard work and true grit got them to where they are now. Take myself; I claim some credit for what I’ve achieved, but I had a lot of good tailwinds that certainly helped immensely.
I was part of the last UK generation eligible for free higher education.