For long term investors who buy and hold, the risk/reward expectations are sometimes very, very, simple.

If you bought the long term U.S. Treasury index via the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (Symbol: TLT) about 12 years ago your yield is around 5% and the total return has been 100%.

Keep in mind, the total return is price appreciation + interest (or yield).

At this starting point, if you are buying it today, your yield is 2.6%… so the expected future total return from the yield is half.

Clearly, the expected total return for bonds is much lower today than just over 10 years ago.

Since the yield is lower, the risk/reward payoff isn’t as positive. The lower yield limits the upside for price appreciation.

There may be times this long term U.S. Treasury is the place to be and times it isn’t.

But over a longer expectation, it’s much less attractive than it was.

No market or security performs well in all conditions, so traditional allocation often holds positions with a negative risk/return profile.

You can probably see why I think it’s critical to be unconstrained and flexible rather than a fixed allocation that ignores the current condition.