Alternatives to the 60/40 Portfolio
Neil Azous, Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Rareview Capital was quoted several times in this featured story from U.S. News.
“If bonds cannot continue to rally or go up in price as (they have) in the last 40 years because interest rates are now near zero, then you have a different profile in terms of diversification,” says Neil Azous, founder and chief investment officer at Rareview Capital in Stamford, Connecticut.
Azous says, “Based on what the pandemic has led to, there’s a wholesale change to portfolio construction.” As a result, Azous and others have been implementing other portfolio allocation strategies to compensate for a portfolio’s underperformance.
He highlights that the 40% part of the 60/40 portfolio, which is traditionally made up of nominal bonds, is being replaced with an inflation protection mix of assets, like inflation-linked bonds, commodities or break-even inflation instruments.
These assets, Azous explains, will hedge against inflation in the event of another economic decline. “The function by the government to protect against a market downturn is going to print more money and that is going to be an inflationary event,” he says. “To hedge against that, you need to replace the nominal portfolio of 40% with inflation-linked products.