What the Fed's big rate cut means to you

What about good-quality long-term bonds like 10-year Treasuries or high-rated corporates? Investors probably should not do anything dramatic with these, either. Many mutual funds owning long-term bonds have beaten stock funds over the past year because falling yields have driven up the prices of older bonds that are more generous.

But now long-term yields are so low it’s hard to imagine bond investors will enjoy similar returns this year, and you certainly won’t make much on interest earnings. Today, the main reason to invest in long-term bonds is to diversify, or spread out risk. If you allocate a certain percentage of your portfolio to bonds, stick to your target, and leave the bond-price speculation to the pros.

Stock-market investors can be excused for scratching their heads — or hiding under the covers. The recent declines are stomach-churning.

But what’s next? The glib answer, of course, is that no one knows for sure. Generally, lower interest rates are good for stocks, because if investors can’t make much with savings accounts, CDs, money markets and other “cash” holdings, they’re willing to take risks with stocks. Higher demand for stocks should push stock prices up.

Except that many other factors can interfere. The slowing economy, for example, means businesses and consumers are likely to spend less, reducing corporate earnings, which are key to stock gains. Currently, there’s also a great deal of worry that we have yet to suffer all the fallout from the credit crunch that began with the subprime mortgage debacle.

Searching for value
Historically, small-company and value stocks tend to do better during recessions than big-company and growth stocks. But both these categories have done well recently, so it may be too much to expect further gains. Also, the value-stock indexes are crammed with financial-company issues, and the financials are still at risk because of the credit crunch and collapse of mortgage-based securities.

Similarly, foreign stocks have tended to beat U.S. stocks during recessions, but that just means they lost less. And foreign stocks, like small and value stocks, have done well in recent years, so it may be a too late to pile in.

Does that mean stock investors should run for the sidelines?

Not all all. The lesson from history is that stocks tend to beat cash and bonds over long periods, and there’s no real reason to think that won’t be so in the future. I’ve talked to lots of experts in the past week and their advice to shareholders is almost unanimous: Hunker down and stay the course.

You should not have money in stocks that you will need over the next five years, and the odds are that stocks will be higher in five years than they are now, perhaps substantially higher.

While history shows that recessions tend to drive stocks down and recoveries to lift them up, it also shows it’s impossible to predict when a recession will begin or end. Even if you knew that, you could not predict the stock moves. In the past nine recessions the stock decline has begun anywhere from one to 13 months before the start of the recession, and the stock rebound began anywhere from eight months before the end of the recession to 12 months after.

So the best move now is to stick with your long-term plan. If it calls for 60 percent stocks, 30 percent bonds and 10 percent cash, make only the adjustments necessary to keep to those targets. And don’t do it every day, or you’ll rack up a lot of unnecessary trading costs. Wait until you are 5 to 10 percentage points off target, and, if you can, make adjustments in your tax-sheltered accounts like IRAs and 401(k)s, so your sales won’t trigger tax bills.

Finally, keep putting money in — through automatic weekly or monthly contributions to your retirement account, for instance, or with a similar automatic program allowing your brokerage or fund company to draw on your bank account.

After all, for a long-term investor these down times are good: You can buy stocks for less than they cost a few months ago.

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