Barry Gilbert
5 Signs You May Be Suffering From Bond Derangement Syndrome
In the third quarter, the Bloomberg US Aggregate Bond Index (“Agg”), the most widely used bond benchmark, fell 3.5%, its worst quarter since Q4 of 2022 (-4.8%). Suddenly, the trauma of 2022 was back for bond investors, and they once again forgot how bonds worked. I’ve anecdotally heard so much fear of bonds lately that …
Barry Gilbert
October 21, 2026
Midterm Elections Don’t Matter a Whole Lot to Markets, but Here’s What Might
We are about six weeks from mid-term elections, and we’ve been getting questions about what the outcome might mean to markets. The short answer is typically not a lot. Political outcomes matter broadly, of course, but they tend to mean a lot less for markets than people think and even more so for mid-terms. In …
Barry Gilbert
September 24, 2026
Tech and Energy Won Together in August, a First for 2026
The S&P 500 climbed 2.7% in August, snapping two straight months of modest losses and lifting the index to a 13.1% total return for the year. If 2026 ended right here, that would be a fairly ordinary year. But there is a lot of the year left, and the more interesting story is the texture …
Barry Gilbert
September 3, 2026
A Flat July for the S&P 500 Reveals Possible Futures in the Details
July was an interesting month for markets. The S&P 500 was nearly flat, falling only 0.06% (including dividends). At the same time, the volatility around AI names was enough to blow up the AI-leveraged hedge fund Situational Awareness. Even with the S&P 500 decline and the near-term correction for AI stocks, there were plenty of …
Barry Gilbert
August 4, 2026
The Rate Regime Hasn’t Fundamentally Changed
Bonds have made a modest comeback lately as rates have retreated amid slow progress in negotiations with Iran and the start of some movement through the Strait of Hormuz. The 10-year Treasury yield peaked at 4.66% on May 19 and now sits at 4.37%, not far off from the median of 4.29% since the start …
Barry Gilbert
June 30, 2026
4 Lessons on Investing in Political Outcomes from Brexit on Its 10th Anniversary
A little more than 10 years ago, on June 23 2016, United Kingdom voters went to the polls to vote in a referendum on whether or not to leave the European Union (EU). The next day, it was announced that the UK electorate had voted to leave the EU, 51.8% to 48.2%. The outcome was …
Barry Gilbert
June 26, 2026
How Many Positions in a Portfolio Is Optimal?
You would be surprised how often I’m asked how many positions there should be in a portfolio or simply hear concerns that there are too many (or too few). A variant on this is concern about position sizes—more often that they’re too small, but occasionally that they’re too big. The mushy but true answer is …
Barry Gilbert
May 27, 2026
Updated Bond View – Time to Opportunistically Rotate Cash to Bonds but Diversify Your Diversifiers
Yields have been on the rise for the last few months. On February 27, the day before US hostilities with Iran began, the 10-year Treasury yield was 3.96%, just 0.01% above its low dating back to early October 2024. Since then, the 10-year yield has climbed nearly 0.50%, closing at 4.47% on May 13, the …
Barry Gilbert
May 14, 2026
Portfolio Defense During Inflationary Growth
Today, we take a look at what’s worked defensively during the current rising rate period. I’m emphasizing “current” because every rising rate period has its own characteristics. To do this, we’ve looked at all S&P 500 drawdowns of more than 5% since September 2020. In some of these periods, bonds did “work” as a diversifier—in …
Barry Gilbert
April 28, 2026
Why Investing in Long Maturity Municipal Bonds May Be Attractive and How To Handle the Risk That It Creates
Today, we tackle a topic that we don’t write about a lot relative to its importance—municipal bonds. Why are munis important? A basic principle of investing (and one of the most ignored), Investment outcomes potentially should not be evaluated on returns but on the returns that you keep—returns after taxes. This is where municipal bonds …
Barry Gilbert
April 16, 2026