We have already outlined in briefest form the portfolio policy of the defensive investor. He should divide his funds between highgrade bonds and high-grade common stocks.
We have suggested as a fundamental guiding rule that the investor should never have less than 25% or more than 75% of his funds in common stocks, with a consequent inverse range of between 75% and 25% in bonds. There is an implication here that the standard division should be an equal one, or 50–50, between the two major investment mediums. According to tradition the
sound reason for increasing the percentage in common stocks would be the appearance of the “bargain price” levels created in a protracted bear market. Conversely, sound procedure would call for reducing the common-stock component below 50% when in the judgment of the investor the market level has become dangerously high.
These copybook maxims have always been easy to enunciate and always difficult to follow—because they go against that very human nature which produces that excesses of bull and bear markets. It is almost a contradiction in terms to suggest as a feasible policy for the average stockowner that he lighten his holdings when the market advances beyond a certain point and add to them after a corresponding decline. It is because the average man operates, and apparently must operate, in opposite fashion that we have had the great advances and collapses of the past; and—this writer believes—we are likely to have them in the future.
If the division between investment and speculative operations were as clear now as once it was, we might be able to envisage investors as a shrewd, experienced group who sell out to the heedless, hapless speculators at high prices and buy back from them at depressed levels. This picture may have had some verisimilitude in bygone days, but it is hard to identify it with financial developments since 1949. There is no indication that such professional
operations as those of the mutual funds have been conducted in this fashion. The percentage of the portfolio held in equities by the two major types of funds—“balanced” and “common-stock”—has changed very little from year to year. Their selling activities have been largely related to endeavors to switch from less to more promising holdings.
If, as we have long believed, the stock market has lost contact with its old bounds, and if new ones have not yet been established, then we can give the investor no reliable rules by which to reduce his common-stock holdings toward the 25% minimum and rebuild them later to the 75% maximum. We can urge that in general the investor should not have more than one-half in equities unless he
has strong confidence in the soundness of his stock position and is sure that he could view a market decline of the 1969–70 type with equanimity. It is hard for us to see how such strong confidence can be justified at the levels existing in early 1972. Thus we would counsel against a greater than 50% apportionment to common stocks at this time. But, for complementary reasons, it is almost
equally difficult to advise a reduction of the figure well below 50%, unless the investor is disquieted in his own mind about the current market level, and will be satisfied also to limit his participation in any further rise to, say, 25% of his total funds.
We are thus led to put forward for most of our readers what may appear to be an oversimplified 50–50 formula. Under this plan the guiding rule is to maintain as nearly as practicable an equal division between bond and stock holdings. When changes in the market level have raised the common-stock component to, say, 55%, the balance would be restored by a sale of one-eleventh of the stock
portfolio and the transfer of the proceeds to bonds. Conversely, a fall in the common-stock proportion to 45% would call for the use of one-eleventh of the bond fund to buy additional equities.
Yale University followed a somewhat similar plan for a number of years after 1937, but it was geared around a 35% “normal holding” in common stocks. In the early 1950s, however, Yale seems to have given up its once famous formula, and in 1969 held 61% of its portfolio in equities (including some convertibles). (At that time the endowment funds of 71 such institutions, totaling $7.6 billion,
held 60.3% in common stocks.) The Yale example illustrates the almost lethal effect of the great market advance upon the once popular formula approach to investment. Nonetheless we are convinced that our 50–50 version of this approach makes good sense for the defensive investor. It is extremely simple; it aims unquestionably in the right direction; it gives the follower the feeling that he is at least making some moves in response to market developments; most
important of all, it will restrain him from being drawn more and more heavily into common stocks as the market rises to more and more dangerous heights.
Furthermore, a truly conservative investor will be satisfied with the gains shown on half his portfolio in a rising market, while in a severe decline he may derive much solace from reflecting how much better off he is than many of his more venturesome friends. While our proposed 50–50 division is undoubtedly the simplest “all-purpose program” devisable, it may not turn out to be the best
in terms of results achieved. (Of course, no approach, mechanical or otherwise, can be advanced with any assurance that it will work out better than another.) The much larger income return now offered by good bonds than by representative stocks is a potent argument for favoring the bond component. The investor’s choice between 50% or a lower figure in stocks may well rest mainly on his own temperament and attitude. If he can act as a cold-blooded
weigher of the odds, he would be likely to favor the low 25% stock component at this time, with the idea of waiting until the DJIA dividend yield was, say, two-thirds of the bond yield before he would establish his median 50–50 division between bonds and stocks.
Starting from 900 for the DJIA and dividends of $36 on the unit, this would require either a fall in taxable bond yields from 71.2% to about 5.5% without any change in the present return on leading stocks, or a fall in the DJIA to as low as 660 if there is no reduction in bond yields and no increase in dividends. A combination of intermediate changes could produce the same “buying point.” A
program of that kind is not especially complicated; the hard part is to adopt it and to stick to it not to mention the possibility that it may turn out to have been much too conservative.
We have suggested as a fundamental guiding rule that the investor should never have less than 25% or more than 75% of his funds in common stocks, with a consequent inverse range of between 75% and 25% in bonds. There is an implication here that the standard division should be an equal one, or 50–50, between the two major investment mediums. According to tradition the
sound reason for increasing the percentage in common stocks would be the appearance of the “bargain price” levels created in a protracted bear market. Conversely, sound procedure would call for reducing the common-stock component below 50% when in the judgment of the investor the market level has become dangerously high.
These copybook maxims have always been easy to enunciate and always difficult to follow—because they go against that very human nature which produces that excesses of bull and bear markets. It is almost a contradiction in terms to suggest as a feasible policy for the average stockowner that he lighten his holdings when the market advances beyond a certain point and add to them after a corresponding decline. It is because the average man operates, and apparently must operate, in opposite fashion that we have had the great advances and collapses of the past; and—this writer believes—we are likely to have them in the future.
If the division between investment and speculative operations were as clear now as once it was, we might be able to envisage investors as a shrewd, experienced group who sell out to the heedless, hapless speculators at high prices and buy back from them at depressed levels. This picture may have had some verisimilitude in bygone days, but it is hard to identify it with financial developments since 1949. There is no indication that such professional
operations as those of the mutual funds have been conducted in this fashion. The percentage of the portfolio held in equities by the two major types of funds—“balanced” and “common-stock”—has changed very little from year to year. Their selling activities have been largely related to endeavors to switch from less to more promising holdings.
If, as we have long believed, the stock market has lost contact with its old bounds, and if new ones have not yet been established, then we can give the investor no reliable rules by which to reduce his common-stock holdings toward the 25% minimum and rebuild them later to the 75% maximum. We can urge that in general the investor should not have more than one-half in equities unless he
has strong confidence in the soundness of his stock position and is sure that he could view a market decline of the 1969–70 type with equanimity. It is hard for us to see how such strong confidence can be justified at the levels existing in early 1972. Thus we would counsel against a greater than 50% apportionment to common stocks at this time. But, for complementary reasons, it is almost
equally difficult to advise a reduction of the figure well below 50%, unless the investor is disquieted in his own mind about the current market level, and will be satisfied also to limit his participation in any further rise to, say, 25% of his total funds.
We are thus led to put forward for most of our readers what may appear to be an oversimplified 50–50 formula. Under this plan the guiding rule is to maintain as nearly as practicable an equal division between bond and stock holdings. When changes in the market level have raised the common-stock component to, say, 55%, the balance would be restored by a sale of one-eleventh of the stock
portfolio and the transfer of the proceeds to bonds. Conversely, a fall in the common-stock proportion to 45% would call for the use of one-eleventh of the bond fund to buy additional equities.
Yale University followed a somewhat similar plan for a number of years after 1937, but it was geared around a 35% “normal holding” in common stocks. In the early 1950s, however, Yale seems to have given up its once famous formula, and in 1969 held 61% of its portfolio in equities (including some convertibles). (At that time the endowment funds of 71 such institutions, totaling $7.6 billion,
held 60.3% in common stocks.) The Yale example illustrates the almost lethal effect of the great market advance upon the once popular formula approach to investment. Nonetheless we are convinced that our 50–50 version of this approach makes good sense for the defensive investor. It is extremely simple; it aims unquestionably in the right direction; it gives the follower the feeling that he is at least making some moves in response to market developments; most
important of all, it will restrain him from being drawn more and more heavily into common stocks as the market rises to more and more dangerous heights.
Furthermore, a truly conservative investor will be satisfied with the gains shown on half his portfolio in a rising market, while in a severe decline he may derive much solace from reflecting how much better off he is than many of his more venturesome friends. While our proposed 50–50 division is undoubtedly the simplest “all-purpose program” devisable, it may not turn out to be the best
in terms of results achieved. (Of course, no approach, mechanical or otherwise, can be advanced with any assurance that it will work out better than another.) The much larger income return now offered by good bonds than by representative stocks is a potent argument for favoring the bond component. The investor’s choice between 50% or a lower figure in stocks may well rest mainly on his own temperament and attitude. If he can act as a cold-blooded
weigher of the odds, he would be likely to favor the low 25% stock component at this time, with the idea of waiting until the DJIA dividend yield was, say, two-thirds of the bond yield before he would establish his median 50–50 division between bonds and stocks.
Starting from 900 for the DJIA and dividends of $36 on the unit, this would require either a fall in taxable bond yields from 71.2% to about 5.5% without any change in the present return on leading stocks, or a fall in the DJIA to as low as 660 if there is no reduction in bond yields and no increase in dividends. A combination of intermediate changes could produce the same “buying point.” A
program of that kind is not especially complicated; the hard part is to adopt it and to stick to it not to mention the possibility that it may turn out to have been much too conservative.
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