I was surprised to read the NY Times article Vanguard Warns of Worsening Odds for the Economy and Markets. Everything is written very carefully using odds so that there is no “prediction” that could be called “wrong” later on, but at the same time if there is a future recession, they will appear to have been “right”. I didn’t know that Vanguard did these sort of economic predictions or that they were deemed so noteworthy.

As the chart below reminds us, all bull markets must eventually come to an end:

risefall_720b

The question is, what is the point? What is actionable about this? You could view this article as encouraging market timing (sell stocks now!), or it could be a prudent reminder to rebalance and assess your risk exposure (sell a little stock now? maybe?). The latter is always a good idea, so let’s be generous and call it that. I wonder what Jack Bogle thinks. I mean, the title of his upcoming book about the history of Vanguard is Stay the Course.

For posterity, I wanted to record their expected 10-year (annualized) returns for the following asset classes (as of mid-2018):

  • US Stocks 3.9%
  • International Stocks 6.5%
  • US Total Bond (Corporate + Government) 3.3%
  • International Bonds 2.9%
  • Commodities 5.9%
  • US Treasury Bonds 3%
  • Cash 2.9%

These are nominal numbers. In another economic outlook article, Vanguard projects inflation to run slightly under 2% annualized.

Vanguard 10-Year Expected Asset Class Returns (2018) from My Money Blog.


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