Webcast excerpt
February 23, 2024
Alongside a rise in interest rates, bonds are resurging as an appealing investing opportunity. In this webcast excerpt, Vanguard CEO Tim Buckley and CIO Greg Davis highlight the role that bonds play for investors and the prospect that they’ll grow over time.
This excerpt is one in a series featuring key takeaways from Vanguard’s A Look Ahead to 2024 webcast. Other topics:
A Look Ahead 2024: Bonds are back
Tim Buckley: Maybe you want to talk about why you keep clamoring that bonds are back?
Greg Davis: It’s a great thing for investors, right? I mean, at the end of the day we talk a little bit about money markets already, right? That you’re actually earning a real yield and real return, and even in the bond market you’re actually seeing people getting compensated for investing, and it’s incentivizing people to save and invest. I mean, it’s very difficult to incentivize people when you’re looking at 10-year bonds at 1.5 or 2%. Why would you buy that as an asset class?
Tim: You would just be buying it for ballast, as in something I can rebalance, or rebalance my portfolio with.
Greg: That’s exactly right, but in terms of that, a viable asset class that you would expect will grow over time and help compound returns for your long-term retirement or other savings needs. The fact that we’ve seen this rise in interest rates has now made this asset class a lot more attractive, and so it’s a much more exciting asset class today than it has been for the last 10 to 15 years.
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