More on Stocks Vs. Bonds

Here’s another quick-and-dirty view of how badly bonds have been beaten stocks recently. This shows the Vanguard 500 Index Investor Fund (VFINX) divided by the Vanguard Long-Term Investment-Grade Fund (VWESX):

I’m using Vanguard’s main S&P 500 index fund as a proxy for stocks and it’s main corporate bond fund as a proxy for bonds. It’s not perfect but it suits our purposes.
As you can see, bonds have beaten stocks consistently since mid-April (meaning, the ratio is falling). The ratio is about where it was 13 months ago, and it’s not terribly far from it’s very low reading from March 2009.
According to this reading, bonds have outperformed stocks since April 1988. It could be older, but the data only goes back to November 1987.

Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on August 24th, 2010 at 3:49 pm

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