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Build a Better Path Part One: What’s Past Is Prologue
Lessons from capital-markets history hold critical insights for portfolio design today.
In the first installment of the Build a Better Path series, we adjust our lens. Instead of zooming into a specific topic, we’ll zoom out, assessing the big picture of investing today. Market dynamics have been shifting—and not for the better—amid structural headwinds, years of sequential inflation/affordability shocks, and recurring geopolitical flare-ups. The challenge for investors? Designing portfolios to deliver return paths that make the most of what markets have to offer.
Watch the replay for part one of our two-parter on Build a Better Path. You’ll gain greater clarity on these key takeaways:
- Six chapters define the modern investment era—and provide important lessons that inform today’s investment strategy.
- If the outsize returns of past decades don’t continue, the sequence of returns becomes critical in driving portfolio success.
- Portfolios engineered to be more resilient have the potential to improve the performance path and—ultimately—outcomes.
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Build a Better Path Part Three: The Past, Present, and Future of Income
The world of income investing looks a lot different today. For decades, falling interest rates fueled strong bond returns, dependable income and diversification. The tailwind helped make the 60/40 portfolio an investing cornerstone. But times changed. Years of near-zero rates and negative real yields challenged bonds' traditional role. The pandemic and a series of historic inflation shocks that followed ushered in an environment of higher rates and more volatility—along with strongly renewed opportunities for income investors. Today, fixed income is at a crossroads. That calls for a modern playbook.
When “Stay the Course” Isn’t Enough: Helping Clients Understand the Path Ahead
The Challenge of Delivering Advice in Uncertain Capital Markets: The capital-markets landscape is brimming with questions, and external and geopolitical shocks are emerging more often. This poses a stiff challenge for advisors: guiding portfolios to support increasingly dynamic retirement plans. The stakes are high. With longer lives, finish lines are distant and there are no restarts. Emotion adds complexity: advisors must help clients overcome short-term impulses that may lead them off track.
Build a Better Path Part Two: 3-D Investing
The critical role of the path of returns in portfolio design: In part one, we zoomed across a half century of financial markets chapters to highlight one of investors’ biggest challenges: defending long-horizon portfolios from sequence-of-returns risk.
Build a Better Path Part One: What’s Past Is Prologue
Lessons from capital-markets history hold critical insights for portfolio design today. In the first installment of the Build a Better Path series, we adjust our lens. Instead of zooming into a specific topic, we’ll zoom out, assessing the big picture of investing today. Market dynamics have been shifting—and not for the better—amid structural headwinds, years of sequential inflation/affordability shocks, and recurring geopolitical flare-ups. The challenge for investors? Designing portfolios to deliver return paths that make the most of what markets have to offer.
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