≡ Menu
Logo of a galaxy with the writing ‘alternate universe’ as a pun on these alternatives to index-linked gilts

Assets do not exist in a vacuum. The late great Harry Markowitz won the Nobel prize for economics for showing that a diversified portfolio is superior to putting all your eggs in one basket.

More modestly, I’d counter that the same thing that crashed the price of index-linked gilts over the past 18 months also walloped a bunch of other assets.

The villain is, of course, the inflation surge, and the rapid ascent of interest rates in response.

Rising rates did for index-linked gilts, drowning out gains made from higher than expected inflation.

That reset was predictable (the timing and speed wasn’t) but it’s still been shocking to watch.

Every asset class whacked by rates

In fact nearly all assets took a beating in 2022 for much the same reasons.

And the pain has continued in 2023 for the most rate-sensitive assets.

The past week alone has been tough, as the City took peak rate expectations to 6.5%:

Financial markets bet on Thursday that the Bank of England will raise interest rates to a 25-year high of 6.5% early next year, up from a previous expected peak of 6.25%, pushing the yield on short-dated government bonds to their highest since mid 2008.

Rate futures showed a roughly two in three chance that the BoE will have raised rates to 6.5% or higher by its February 2024 meeting, up from 5% now.

Warren Buffett likens interest rates to gravity. That’s on account of how rates affect every aspect of finance.

Hence all assets were repriced as Bank Rate rose 20-fold from 0.25% to 5% in a year and a half.

Shares fell, naturally. Especially growth stocks.

Risk-averse investors might usually enjoy a snicker on seeing thrill-seeking equity investors getting their just deserts, but not in this crash. Safety-first investors were roughhoused just the same.

Besides index-linked gilts (aka ‘linkers’), conventional bonds – government and corporate – have been thumped. So too the supposedly boring ‘bond proxies’ invested in by those who chased higher yields, who feared a bond crash, or who preferred the hope of some growth in their paltry income and so bought dividend stalwarts like Diageo or trusts like Finsbury Growth & Income.

All down, down, down.

Normally some asset class does well in a rout. But very little has prospered for long in the declines of 2022 onwards, except for a few niches like energy stocks and UK large caps. Investors of all stripes have been carried out on their shields.

Yet for those with the appetite – and the dry powder – to sally forth once more, all this carnage also makes for opportunities.

I just wrote 6,000 words for Mogul members about index-linked gilts, for example.

And that too-vast word count was even after I removed a section about alternatives, out of mercy for my readers. Instead I’ll run through a few below.

Again, if this week in the markets is anything to go by then the pain is not yet over for these usually less volatile assets.

But I have to think we’re closer to the end than the beginning for the big falls.

Vanilla gilts and other bonds

Like linkers, conventional gilts crashed in 2022. Anything beyond toddler-level duration plunged in price as yields rose on higher rates.

Horrible for standard 60/40 portfolios. But it was even worse if you were a cautious type and so invested in an extra-conservative portfolio that was more overweight in gilts.

This is strikingly illustrated by charting the performance of Vanguard’s LifeStrategy funds over the past 18 months.

  • The LifeStrategy fund with 80% in higher-risk equities did best.
  • The version with only 20% in equities and 80% in bonds fared worst.

Source: Trustnet

Whenever I update this chart, I’m honestly staggered.

I fretted about a bond market crash a decade ago. By 2015 I thought – wrongly – it might be upon us. The Accumulator ran the numbers in 2020, and again in 2021. Over and over we warned that while government bonds were generally a less risky asset that could cushion your portfolio when equities fell, they were not risk-free. Especially not in real terms, and when sporting low-to-negative yields after years of barely-there interest rates.

Yet despite all that, I still gasp when I see this chart.

Goodness knows what the average LifeStrategy investor has made of this experience. Whatever we want to tell ourselves after this bond crash for the ages, I doubt anyone buying into the LifeStrategy 20% Equity fund before 2022 saw the potential for the Bizarro World chart above.

So much for our dark yesterdays. The good news is the crash has taken yields back to saner levels.

You can now get a 5.5% yield on a one-year gilt, for example. That’s compares – ahem – very well to 0% in 2020. It’s competitive with all but the very best buy savings accounts in July 2023.

What’s more, gilts are free of capital gains tax. The coupon on most short-duration gilts is very low – from 0.25% to 2.75% – so the yield-to-redemption largely comprises a capital gain. As I said you don’t pay tax on the capital gain, just income tax on the coupon. This makes gilts particularly attractive right now for those with cash outside of tax shelters who pay high income tax rates.

Gilts are government backed so there are no credit risk or FSCS limit issues. (You might still worry about your platform…)

Of course these are nominal yields – far below CPI of 8.7%. So a negative real return, currently.

However if you think inflation will fall sooner than expected, you might buy ahead of a re-rating.

More importantly for investors socking away money for the long-term, there have been worse times to top-up to your government bond fund in a balanced portfolio. (The past decade, for a start!)

Bolder or more active investors might also look at corporate and high-yield bonds. Just remember that these will usually fare worse if all these rate rises ultimately send us into recession, and so make it harder for companies to meet their obligations.

Whatever you do don’t write off bonds completely on the back of a bad crash.

Bonds are governed by maths and – at least in nominal terms – I’d say the sums are now much more attractive.

As with all the assets in this article, we might well have to suffer more pain until the interest rate cycle finally turns though.

Perhaps one answer is to slowly build up towards your desired position over time – the way we more typically talk about pound-cost averaging into equities?

Annuities

Arguably the big one, and for a typical retiree probably better than mucking about with gilt ladders. Especially if you plan to live a long time and you buy an annuity with inflation protection.

Annuity providers use government bonds to back their guarantees. So there’s a direct relationship between annuity payouts and gilt yields:

Annuity income – Ages 65 and 60, £100,000 purchase, joint life 2/3rds and level payments

Source: William Burrows

Unlike with a retirement bond ladder, with an annuity you won’t run out of money if you overstay your innings. The company pays out until you shuffle off.

Also, by pooling many holders together the annuity provider spreads longevity risk. This improves the attractiveness of annuities for the average policy holder. (A few unlucky souls lose out).

On the other hand, once you buy an annuity your capital is more or less sunk. With an index-linked ladder you can sell up for cash if required.

Annuity providers are (understandably) taking a slice of our pie too. That’s why they’re in business.

Obviously a lot to think about. Consult professional advice if you need it.

For much more on index-linked gilts and linker ladders, please see my huge article for Moguls.

Infrastructure investment trusts, renewables, and other alternatives

These were a long favourite of yield-seeking private investors. But veteran readers may recall I was wary, not least due to how they invariably traded on high premiums.

That was my loss for many years, perhaps. Trusts could and did issue more shares at premiums, and they did so to grow. This funded new asset exposure, and by extension their dividend growth.

Whether shareholders understood this was going on is another matter!

Either way, the wheels came off in 2022. Higher rates tanked infrastructure trust share prices. They have continued to fall in 2023 and most are now on big discounts.

For instance, the popular HICL Infrastructure (Ticker: HICL) went from a 20% premium in summer 2020 to a 20%+ discount today:

Source: AIC

Pretty breathtaking – especially as the NAV reportedly rose nicely over that time. But the market clearly has its doubts.

In theory infrastructure trusts offer some inflation-protection – either explicitly in their contracts or implicitly due to the nature of their assets. (For example, a toll road can raise prices).

But higher interest rates also means higher discount rates applied to asset valuations / future cashflows. (Ironically, pretty much the same thing that hammered racier growth stocks.)

It’s all pretty complicated and the picture varies from trust to trust. Some seem set to be more responsive to inflation than others; with pretty much all the least we can say is there appears to be a lag!

Are infrastructure trusts now bargains? Maybe. HICL yields over 6%, and the big discount would seem to price in a lot of pain.

But the recent debacle with Thames Water – an infrastructure asset, you’ll note – has opened up a new front for the forces of fretfulness.

Thames Water is carrying many billions in debt. Bad enough from a confidence perspective. But there is an extra wrinkle in that its income is linked to CPI inflation, whereas the debt is based on the (higher) RPI measure.

The Financial Times notes that:

Surging inflation might at first glance appear beneficial for a regulated water company that is able to pass on costs to its consumers. But a mismatch between the measures of inflation Thames Water uses to hedge its debt and to price its customers’ bills has caused a growing strain on its balance sheet.

More than half the group’s debt is linked to inflation, meaning interest payments increase as inflation steps up, which the company has justified by noting that customer bills are also linked to it.

However, the debt is linked to one measure, the retail prices index (RPI), which is at a historically wide premium to the other, the consumer prices index adjusted for housing costs (CPIH), which the majority of its bills are now priced against.

I wonder if this is a problem for UK-focused infrastructure assets more widely?

You would certainly want to dig deep into the individual trusts, or at least buy a basket. They are all slightly different under the tin. And often in ways that will only become apparent under duress – such as the sudden death of the zero-interest rate era.

Moreover some assets – particular with renewables – may only be leased to the trust for 25 years. They aren’t perpetual owned. (This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But you need to know.)

Oh, and as for my schadenfreude at infrastructure trusts finally falling from their sky-high premiums…

…well, over the past six months or so I invested just under 2% of my net worth into infrastructure trusts at various prices – and they’ve continued to fall.

Ho hum.

Commercial property REITs and funds

Same again. Valuations smashed with rate rises, big discounts on REITs, debt an issue especially with some smaller players, superficially attractive dividends, and a nervous market.

Commercial property is perhaps even riskier than infrastructure in that the one thing that really seems to have changed following the Covid pandemic is the demand for office space.

Then again, property – and property funds – are age-old assets, whereas the track record of listed infrastructure and renewable trusts is only a couple of decades long.

Eventually you’d think redundant buildings could be put to new uses (apartments, say) or they may fall off the market in disrepair, increasing the value of what’s left standing.

In theory the replacement cost of offices has risen with higher inflation, too. And normally rents would also be rising – if it wasn’t for that pesky virus.

It’s a bit of a mess, and I’m not foaming at the mouth. Once bitten, twice shy.

Still, never say never again.

NS&I savings certificates

I’m mentioning these because many of us have a legacy holding that’s among our most cherished portfolio constituents. They have been the best inflation-proofing asset a retail investor could own.

You can’t even buy new inflation-protecting savings certificates from National Savings anymore. But for the past decade or so you’ve been able to rollover expiring certificates into new multi-year certificates, albeit at derisory yields.

Indeed a savings certificate that’s rolled over in July 2023 will bag you the princely interest rate of 0.01%, plus inflation linking on the CPI measure.

Against that linkers now offer real yields as high as 1% or more. And until 2030 index-linked gilts will continue to track RPI inflation. As mentioned, RPI is typically higher than the CPI measure.

It’s worth noting too that a little discussed change to the certificate small print means you can no longer cash in NS&I savings certificates early. You must hold them to term. That surely further reduces their attractiveness and versatility versus index-linked gilts.

So is it time to switch to linkers?

Maybe – or at least maybe partially, if you have an outsized holding. The certificates’ real yield is derisory, the inflation measure is now less attractive, and NS&I appears determined to kill them off.

However I’ll be keeping mine. They are only 2% or so of my portfolio, and once you cash them in that’s it.

Also certificates have one big edge left over linkers.

Unlike with index-linked gilts, the index-linking from certificates is effectively suspended if inflation turns negative. This would make certificates more attractive assets to hold in a deflationary period. Even their tiny coupon could be very valuable.

No alternative to making your own mind up

As ever, I’m sharing all this to offer a snapshot of the landscape – particularly for those of you who (for your sins) invest actively.

I am not – as the house troll put it in the comments the other day on one of my co-blogger’s commodity posts – “pushing” any of these assets.

You’d hope that’s clear from the fact that I’ve raised loads of downsides too. This on top of the even more obvious point that there’s nothing in it for me to ‘push’ this or that asset onto readers.

Push membership? Sure, fair enough. That’s existential for the future of our site.

But we don’t benefit one way or another if you buy commodities, gilts, or anything else. Completely obviously, you’d think.

Trolls are gonna troll I guess.

For most of us this a difficult time to face decisions as an investor. Indeed a huge benefit of investing passively in index funds according to a preset strategy is you avoid all this mental drama.

Those of us who do deviate will always face risks. Our troll will continue to never put a foot wrong, and compound his billions into trillions thanks to the benefit of hindsight. Here in the real world the rest of us will win some and lose some.

It could well be that we’re still early into this great rate rout, for all that it feels late in the day. So please do your own research and make your own mind up.

Oh, and incidentally, as I always stress but some never hear, these alternatives aren’t mutually exclusive. You don’t have to choose, say, linkers over certificates. You can own both if you want to.

Investing isn’t like Xbox versus PlayStation. The more the merrier with diversification, up to a point.

That ‘point’ is where the assets no longer deliver any attractive returns in themselves. If you buy a small and overly-indebted property REIT and it goes bust, don’t go crying to the memory of Harry Markowitz!

{ 38 comments }

The Slow and Steady passive portfolio update: Q2 2023

The Slow & Steady portfolio is down 0.63% on the quarter

Sometimes in investing you find yourself going nowhere. It’s both dull and unsettling at the same time – like being trapped in ice on a wooden sailing ship. Stuck fast, yet unavoidably alert to every crack and moan as a frozen fist constricts around the hull.

Boredom and impotence are formidable tormentors. How long will your passive investing faith ward off the urge to do something?

Perhaps it’s not quite that bad. But the fact is our Slow and Steady portfolio has barely moved for a year, in nominal terms. Which means it’s actually down about 8% after inflation.

After a jolt forward last quarter, the portfolio subsided another fraction these past three months.

Once again, it’s mostly our government bonds that have done the damage. Our UK gilts fund lost another 6.2% this quarter, and is down 7.1% annualised. Call that a 10% average loss, after inflation, for every year of the portfolio’s life. That’s hard to stomach.

Meanwhile, the overall annualised return of the portfolio is now 6.17%, or around 3% in real-terms:

The portfolio annualised return is 6.17%.

The Slow & Steady portfolio is Monevator’s model passive investing portfolio. It was set up at the start of 2011 with £3,000. An extra £1,200 is invested every quarter into a diversified set of index funds, tilted towards equities. You can read the origin story and find all the previous passive portfolio posts tucked away in the Monevator vaults.

Compared to where we stood a few years ago, 3% annualised seems very measly. But the historical average return of a 60/40 portfolio is only around 3.6%.

So we’re a little sub-average (not an unusual feeling for me). But the real problem is I think I unwittingly anchored to the heady 7.3% annualised real return we’d notched up by December 2021.

As many commentators cautioned at the time, that was a castle in the sky, built on QE.

If then like me you became habituated to that kind of success, it’s probably past time to readjust and focus on a more realistic set of expectations.

A pain in the bonds

I’m not arguing amid all this that bonds should be ditched. Besides the fact that we’re passive investors who stick to the plan, the recession warnings are blaring and the ill-omen of an inverted yield curve hangs overhead:

Source: FT, UK government bond yields. 30 June 2023.

A quick bluffer’s guide to the inverted yield curve signal – Typically, long-dated government bonds have higher yields than shorter-dated maturities. But this normality can be upended by market demand for longer bonds if enough investors anticipate recession. Such buying takes yields at the long end of the curve below those at the short end. As indicated by the red boxes above.

We’ll be glad of our bonds if the US version of the inversion is correctly signalling a hard landing, as argued by Campbell Harvey of Research Affiliates:

Two negatives—the Fed’s mistaken characterization of inflation as transitory, and the Fed’s failure to pause rate hikes in early 2023 amid signs of moderating inflation—do not make a positive. The result is a banking and financial system, as well as a commercial real estate market, under stress. As a result, the odds of a hard landing have increased.

If a big recession kicks in then it’ll probably be our portfolio’s best chance to reverse some of the bond losses we suffered in 2022, as the market takes cover in their (relative!) safety.

Hence I’m back to being frozen. There’s no clear path forward and I remain in the passive investor’s super-position: poised for any eventuality because, really, nobody knows what’s coming next.

New transactions

Every quarter we place our coin onto the collection plate of the high church of global capitalism. [Jeez! Why can’t you just say ‘stock market’? – Ed]. Our tithe is split between seven funds according to our predetermined asset allocation.

We rebalance using Larry Swedroe’s 5/25 rule. That hasn’t been activated this quarter, so the trades play out like this:

UK equity

Vanguard FTSE UK All-Share Index Trust – OCF 0.06%

Fund identifier: GB00B3X7QG63

New purchase: £60

Buy 0.248 units @ £241.51

Target allocation: 5%

Developed world ex-UK equities

Vanguard FTSE Developed World ex-UK Equity Index Fund – OCF 0.14%

Fund identifier: GB00B59G4Q73

New purchase: £444

Buy 0.81 units @ £548.47

Target allocation: 37%

Global small cap equities

Vanguard Global Small-Cap Index Fund – OCF 0.29%

Fund identifier: IE00B3X1NT05

New purchase: £60

Buy 0.158 units @ £379.98

Target allocation: 5%

Emerging market equities

iShares Emerging Markets Equity Index Fund D – OCF 0.21%

Fund identifier: GB00B84DY642

New purchase: £96

Buy 54.425 units @ £1.76

Target allocation: 8%

Global property

iShares Environment & Low Carbon Tilt Real Estate Index Fund – OCF 0.17%

Fund identifier: GB00B5BFJG71

New purchase: £60

Buy 28.369 units @ £2.12

Target allocation: 5%

UK gilts

Vanguard UK Government Bond Index – OCF 0.12%

Fund identifier: IE00B1S75374

New purchase: £324

Buy 2.552 units @ £126.97

Target allocation: 27%

Global inflation-linked bonds

Royal London Short Duration Global Index-Linked Fund – OCF 0.27%

Fund identifier: GB00BD050F05

New purchase: £156

Buy 150.434 units @ £1.04

Dividends reinvested: £93.10 (Buy another 89.77 units)

Target allocation: 13%

New investment contribution = £1,200

Trading cost = £0

Take a look at our broker comparison table for your best investment account options. InvestEngine is currently cheapest if you’re happy to invest only in ETFs. Or learn more about choosing the cheapest stocks and shares ISA for your circumstances.

Average portfolio OCF = 0.16%

If this all seems too complicated check out our best multi-asset fund picks. These include all-in-one diversified portfolios, such as the Vanguard LifeStrategy funds.

Interested in tracking your own portfolio or using the Slow & Steady investment tracking spreadsheet? Our piece on portfolio tracking shows you how.

Finally, learn more about why we think most people are better off choosing passive vs active investing.

Take it steady,

The Accumulator

{ 26 comments }

Expected returns: Estimates for your investment planning

Expected returns are unpredictable. As symbolised by this picture of a pair of dice.

Understanding your future expected returns is an important part of your investment plan.

Your expected return is the average annual growth that you can reasonably hope your portfolio will deliver over time. It may be a real return of 4% per year, for example.

With a credible expected return figure you can work out whether you’re investing enough money to meet your goals – just by plugging your number into an investment calculator.

Give us a few minutes and we’ll show you how it’s done.

What are expected returns?

Expected returns are estimates of the future performance of individual investments – typically asset classes. Expected return figures are provided as average annual returns that you might see over a particular timeframe. Say the next five or ten years. 

The figures are usually based on historical data, but modified by current valuation metrics.

The Gordon Equation is the best known expected returns formula. 

Because future returns are highly uncertain, some sources offer a range of expected returns or probabilities. This emphasises the impossibility of precise predictions. 

Think of expected returns as a bit like a long-range weather forecast. You’ll get some guidance on conditions coming down the line. But expected returns can’t tell you when exactly it will rain. 

Even so, expected returns are a useful stand-in for the ‘rate of return’ required by investment calculators and retirement calculators.

For instance:

A retirement calculator picture shows you where to put your expected returns figure.

You’d put your portfolio expected return number in your calculator’s ‘rate of return’ slot.

By collating estimates for individual asset classes, we can calculate a portfolio’s expected return. See the table below.  

Moreover, because expected return calculations are informed by current market valuations, they may be a better guide to the next decade than historical data based solely on past conditions.

Expected returns: ten-year predictions

Asset class / Source

Vanguard (31/5/23)

 Research Affiliates (30/6/23) BlackRock (31/3/23) Monevator (13/7/23) Median (13/7/23)
Global equities 6.8 8.2 7.7 6.7 7.3
UK equities 5.5 10.8 6.9 8.3 7.6
Emerging markets 12.8 9.6 8.4 9.6
Global REITs 10.1 4.4 8 8
UK gov bonds 4.5 3.5 4.4 4.4
Global gov bonds (£ hedged) 3.5 3.5
Global aggregate bonds (£ hedged) 4.8 3.7 3.8 3.8
Inflation-linked bonds 7 4.6 5.8
Inflation 4.4 3.5 4

Source: As indicated by column titles, compiled by Monevator.

The table shows the ten-year expected returns1 for key asset classes, expressed as nominal average annual returns in GBP. 

We have sourced them from a variety of experts.

Monevator’s expected return on equities (including REITs) are calculated using the Gordon Equation.2

The expected return on UK government bonds is simply the prevailing yield-to-maturity of the ten-year gilt. 

For average inflation we used the ten-year UK instantaneous implied inflation forward curve (gilts) chart from the Bank of England

Make sure you subtract your inflation estimate from nominal figures. This gives you a real return figure to deploy.3

Their mileage may vary

As you can see from our table, opinions vary on the expected rate of return.

Methodology, inflation assumptions, and timing all make a difference.

Since our last update, equity return expectations have dropped a touch (less than 1% on aggregate) while the bond outlook has significantly improved. UK government bonds, in particular, are now projected to earn a small real return after inflation. That’s thanks to rising bond yields which inflict capital losses in the short-term but leave us better off in the long-run. 

Incidentally, Research Affiliates and BlackRock provide expected return rates for more sub-asset classes if those above don’t cover your needs. BlackRock’s tool even offers 30-year projections.

Of course, the longer your timeline, the bigger your pinch of salt.

Portfolio expected returns

Okay, so now what? 

Well, let’s use the asset class expected return figures above to calculate your portfolio’s expected return.

Your portfolio’s expected return is the weighted average of the expected return of each asset class you hold. 

The next table shows you how to calculate the expected return of a portfolio. Just substitute your own asset allocation for the example one below. 

Asset class  Allocation (%) Real expected return (%) Weighted expected return (%)
Global equities 60 3.2 0.6 x 3.2 = 1.92  
UK equities 10 4.8 0.1 x 4.8 = 0.48
Emerging markets 10 4.9 0.1 x 4.9 = 0.49
UK gov bonds 20 0.94 0.2 x 0.94 = 0.19
Portfolio expected return 3.08

Portfolio expected return = the sum of weighted expected returns. Giving us 3.08% in this example.

3.08% is not great. But it’s better than the 2.83% we were expecting only 12 months ago. (For this example I used Monevator’s nominal expected returns minus inflation to derive the real return.)

Feel free to use any set of figures from the first table. Or else mix-and-match expected returns for particular asset classes where you can find a source. Research Affiliates and BlackRock should cover most of your bases. 

The expected return of your bond fund is its yield-to-maturity (YTM). Look for it on the fund’s webpage.

Because most sources present nominal expected returns, remember to deduct your inflation estimate to get a real expected return. 

You should also subtract investment costs and taxes. Keep them low!

The expected return of a portfolio formula is therefore: 

  • The nominal expected return of each asset class – minus inflation, costs, and taxes  
  • % invested per asset class multiplied by real expected return rate
  • Add up all those numbers to determine your portfolio’s expected return

The resultant portfolio-level expected return figure can be popped into any investment calculator.

You’ll quickly see how long it’ll take to hit your goals for a given amount of cash invested.

How to use your expected return

Input your expected return calculation as your rate of growth when you plot your own scenarios

Drop the number into any good investment calculator or in the interest rate field of our compound interest calculator.

As we saw, the expected return rate we came up with in the portfolio above is pretty disappointing.

Historically we’d expect a 60/40 portfolio to deliver a 4% average rate of return.

But after a long bull market for equities and bonds – even given the recent declines – market pundits seem to feel there’s less juice left in the lemon. They’ve therefore curbed their expectations.

If you’re modelling an investing horizon of several decades, however, it’s legitimate to switch to longer-run historical returns

That’s because we can assume long-term averages are more likely to reassert themselves over 30 or 40 year stretches. 

The average annualised rate of return for global equities is around 5% since 1900. That’s a real return. Hence there’s no need to deduct inflation this time. 

UK equities weigh in around the same.

Meanwhile gilts have delivered a 1.8% real annualised return

Even though your returns will rarely be average year-to-year, it’s reasonable to expect (though there’s no guarantee) that your returns will average out over two or three decades. Because that’s what tends to happen over the long term.

Excessively great expectations

In contrast, planning on bagging a real equity return of 8% per year is living in LaLa-land.

Not because it’s impossible. Golden eras for asset class returns do happen. But you’ll need to be lucky to live through one of them if you’re to hit the historically high return numbers.

Nobody’s financial plan should be founded on luck. Luck tends to run out.

Opt for a conservative strategy instead. You’ll be better able to adapt if expectations fall short. And you can always ease off later if you’re way ahead. 

Remember your expected return number will be wrong to some degree, but it’s still better than reading tea leaves or believing all your dreams will come true. 

Don’t like what you see when you run your numbers? In that case your best options are to:

  • Save more
  • Save longer
  • Lower your financial independence target number

All are much preferable to wishing and hoping.

How accurate are expected returns?

Expected returns shouldn’t be relied upon as a guaranteed glimpse of the future, as if they were racing tips from a kindly time-traveller. 

Indeed the first time we posted about expected returns we collated the following forecasts:

Expected return predictions dating back to almost a decade ago.

These were long-range, real return estimates but the FCA one in particular was calibrated as a 10-15 year projection for UK investors. 

What happened? Well, the ten-year annualised real returns were actually:

  • Global equities: 7.6%4
  • UK government bonds: -2.6%5
  • A 60:40 portfolio returned 3.5% annualised

The expected return forecasts above now look amazingly prescient. Before 2022 they looked too pessimistic, but that turbulent year of rate rises has knocked both equities and bonds down a peg or three. 

Previously, 10-year actual returns were far ahead of the forecasts but one explanation is that our returns had been juiced by successive waves of quantitative easing from Central Banks. Perhaps, too, the retrenchment of globalisation is also a factor. 

Still, I wouldn’t expect even the greatest expert to be consistently on-target. Rather, it’s better to think of their expected returns as offering one plausible path through a multiverse of potential timelines.

Shock therapy

If you can stand it, go back to your investment calculator and dial in a more pessimistic scenario. Then plug in the lowest of all the respected expected return figures you can find.

Look at the pitiful outcome. Wonder if the decimal point got misplaced.

Scoring that nightmare onto your brain might stop you from anchoring on a shinier expected return.

Okay, that was horrible.

Now increase your expectations and peek at a rosier path for a quick morale boost. 

Feel better? More motivated? Great!

Now try to forget about the dream scenario, and simply invest for all your worth.

Take it steady,

The Accumulator

P.S. This is obvious to old hands, but new investors should note that expected returns do not hint at the fevered gyrations that can grip the markets at any time.

Sad to say, but your wealth won’t smoothly escalate by a pleasant 4% to 5% a year.

Rather, on any given day you have a 50-50 chance of tuning in to see a loss on the equity side of your portfolio.

Every year, there’s on average a 30% chance of a loss in the stock market for the year as a whole.

And on that happy note, I’ll bid you good fortune!

Note: this article has been updated. Some comments below might be past their Best Before dates. Check when they were published and scroll down for the latest input.

  1. Note that most corporates badge their expected returns calculations as ‘capital market assumptions.’ []
  2. Current dividend yield data comes from relevant Vanguard and iShares index trackers. We added on inflation to make our numbers a nominal return. This is purely for comparison purposes with other sources who use nominal returns. Inflation should be subtracted from all nominal expected returns so you’re working with a more realistic real return. []
  3. Real returns subtract inflation from your investment results. In other words, they’re a more accurate portrayal of your capital growth in relation to purchasing power than standard nominal returns. []
  4. Source: Vanguard FTSE All World ETF []
  5. Source: Vanguard UK Gilt ETF []
{ 54 comments }

Weekend reading: Missing linkers

Weekend reading: Missing linkers post image

What caught my eye this week.

A friend of mine – someone in the investment business no less – was surprised when I mentioned I was looking into index-linked gilts for my latest Moguls membership article.

“Nobody normal knows about them anymore I agree – but nobody wants to either,” he laughed. “You should write about Apple. It’ll be $3 trillion again by Friday!”

My friend was right about Apple. But I think he is wrong about linkers.

Of course returns on these UK government bonds have been diabolical recently.

But for a would-be core asset class, that’s all the more reason to dig in now.

Index-linked gilt gore

Blowing off the mental cobwebs with linkers is necessary because it’s been a long time since they were attractively priced for anyone who actually had a choice about where to invest their money.

True, real yields were positive for a blink and you missed it moment amidst the Mini Budget chaos.

But linker yields were low or negative for a decade before that.

And of course it’s true that to bring us today’s more attractive opportunities, those already holding linkers suffered mightily.

Look at this five-year share price graph of the iShares index-linked gilt ETF (Ticker: INXG) – preferably from behind a sofa:

From nearly £23 in December 2021, this long duration basket of UK linkers has fallen 40% to under £13.50.

That the crash occurred during a bout of heady inflation must be particularly galling. (Even if you understand the reasons why.)

For those who heard bonds were ‘safe’ and didn’t read the small print, it’s been a rough ride.

No wonder many now seem to hate the asset class.

Here’s gains we made earlier

Realise though that the seeds for 2022’s losses were planted by many years of bountiful harvest, in which linkers delivered far more than was expected of them.

The low interest rate era was a windfall. Cop a load of INXG’s run-up to its gruesome swan dive:

An allegedly boring asset beloved of pension funds for liability-matching, doubling in a decade?

Nice returns if you can get them.

Linkers climbed even as alarm bells rang – not least for my co-blogger – and their yields went negative, causing a million economics textbooks to be earmarked for pulping.

If you liked linkers at -3%, you should love them now

Even when they were guaranteed to lose money in real terms, institutions (apparently) thought it worth buying linkers (presumably) for their known, inflation-protected cashflows.

In November 2021 the UK actually managed to sell a brand new 50-year linker on a negative yield of -2.4%. What were the buyers thinking?

As John Kay put it recently:

That is none of my business’, replied Pooh Bah. ‘My job is to ensure that everyone is certain to get the pension they have been promised, even 50 years from now.

That seems to confuse security with certainty, mused the Emperor.

Like Kay, I don’t think regulators pushing pensions into negative-yielding bonds made much sense. Protection from inflation is valuable. But negative yields mean savers had to shrink their retirement pots to pay for it – or else take on some other risk to make up the difference. (Leverage, say.)

With that said, we must beware hindsight bias.

Maybe in some other reality, governments and central banks didn’t deliver the massive support during the pandemic lockdowns that they’re now being derided for, and we slid into a depression.

In that no-growth other world, perhaps INXG went on to touch £30?

Perhaps – but it’s moot. Because in our world, interest rates did go up again.

Incredibly quickly, in fact. And linker prices duly crashed.

Linker inkling

As a direct result of last year’s rout, you can now get a small but real positive return when buying into index-linked gilts – even while protecting your money from inflation.

That’s a huge change. And it’s why I wrote 6,000 words on index-linked gilts for Moguls, despite my friend’s objections.

As I’ve said before, if 2022 taught you that bonds are bad then you learned the wrong lesson.

Recent bond returns have been ugly for the ages. But at today’s prices they haven’t look so attractive for a decade.

Have a great weekend!

[continue reading…]

{ 62 comments }