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Old 04-12-2008, 03:11 PM
meaghanchan meaghanchan is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jc3900 View Post
Wouldn't a 100% equity be better for a very young investor?
It might, or it might not. There a couple of compelling reasons to have at least a small portion of bonds in your portfolio, although if you look at the reasons and decided that 100% equity was better for you, I wouldn't say that that's a wrong decision, and it's certainly one many people have made.

Some reasons you might want some bonds in your portfolio:

1. They reduce volatility a great deal for a very small reduction in expected rate of return.

2. There is a chance (albeit small) that bonds will outperform stocks even over your very long time horizon

3. Get the rebalancing bonus- if you rebalance to a target allocation (say, 90/10) you will be selling stocks when they are high and buying bonds when they are low, or selling bonds when they are high and buying stocks when they are low.
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