4-minute Money Ideas

Do You Look at the Risk-Reward Ratio of Your Stocks and Bonds? By Douglas Goldstein CFP® - helping olim handle their U.S. investments from Israel The risk-reward ratio is an attempt to quantify the amount of risk you need to take in order to get an anticipated return from any investment. If you were to only consider past returns when deciding whether to invest in stocks or bonds, stocks would appear to be the clear winner. From 2007 to 2016, stocks had an average annual return of 9% versus about 5% for 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds. If past returns are your only measurement of performance, then perhaps you should consider high-yield corporate bonds. This year, Harvard University’s endowment fund made its largest allocation to a high-yield corporate bond exchange traded fund (ETF), which had a one-year return (through March 2017) of 13.4%. Risk vs return Prudent investors know that past performance is not a guarantee of future returns, and instead of chasing last year’s returns they start by looking at their o