Some individual investors forgo bonds and invest only in stocks. Interest rates have been rising over the past year. The Federal Reserve Board raised short-term rates six times. Corporate bond yields are much higher than Treasury yields. The current economic expansion is the longest ever from March 1991 to the present.
Some individual investors forgo bonds and invest only in stocks.
There are a huge number of people who were either not paying much attention to investing in the 1970s or were born after that time, so they can recollect nothing but strong equity markets. And, frankly, that's been a very profitable slant on the world for some years now, because stocks have been outperforming bonds. But many folks don't realize that's not always going to be the case. The tendency to pile into the asset class that's performed best recently is a self-reinforcing thing. Every time the stock market goes up, you get hungrier to own stocks rather than take winnings off the table.