To the Editor: The 60/40 stock/bond portfolio allocation is finished ("The Death of the Safe Haven: How to Fix Your Bond Strategy as Yields Rise," Cover Story, Sept. 3). Bond fund managers need to justify their existence and are coming up with ever-more complex solutions: Permanent Portfolio Family of Funds' Michael Cuggino says to stay with relatively short bonds. Bridgeway Capital Management's John Montgomery says he has removed bonds from his personal portfolio. RFG Advisory's Rick Wedell "feels a bit better about corporate credit." Dodge & Cox's Lucy Johns has gone to 30% corporate bonds. Gavekal Research's Charles Gave recommends buying Chinese bonds. Please! The simplest answer is usually the best. Just park your bond percentage in a virtually no-risk money-market fund at 3.65% and wait out the turmoil.
Harvey Rosen Brooklyn, N.Y.
To the Editor: Many investors use bonds as ballast in their portfolio and want to retain liquidity if needed to deploy capital in a market correction or if they need funds to live on at that time. That's why bond funds can be useful.
Joe Lanzer On Barrons.com
Fixing the Deficit
To the Editor: We seem to be incapable of fixing the debt/deficit problem ("What We've Learned Since 9/11," Up & Down Wall Street, Sept. 4). It's like obese people who know they need to lose weight in order to save their own lives, but they just keep right on eating. As Felix Zulauf said recently, the fix is "politically impossible." Good luck making the average American understand why free stuff isn't really free. The increasing bond rates are no doubt related to the increasingly precarious situation in which the U.S. finds itself. I would expect the yellow metal to be the final store of value, since "gold is money. Everything else is credit," as J.P. Morgan once said. Meanwhile, the game of chicken with the bond market continues.
John Collins On Barrons.com
Every REIT Has a Story
To the Editor: After more than three decades investing in and developing commercial real estate, I've learned that spreadsheets tell only part of the story ("Ride This Roller Coaster if You Dare. Consider the 6% REIT That Bought It, Too," Streetwise, Sept. 4). Sometimes you need to experience the real estate for yourself-as Barron's Jack Hough did.
Today's REIT universe includes casinos, data centers, cell towers, recreational-vehicle parks, ski resorts, senior housing, self-storage, farmland, timberland, and even cannabis properties. That diversity is one of the things that makes REIT investing so fascinating. Every property has a customer, an economic engine, and a story behind its cash flow.
Brad Thomas Greenville, S.C.
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