Welcome to Ask an Advisor, where we here at Team Clark go deeper on all things, investing,

saving through retirement.

I'm Krista Dibias here with Wes Moss.

Wes Moss.

Hey, Krista.

What are you talking about today, Wes?

The first one is a really important overarching topic.

I think it applies to pretty much any investor that's watching, which is the headline

you'll read and it's perennial, or I'll see it a couple times a year, is the 60-40 dead?

Is the question?

Really what they're pointing to is that is balance investing not work as well as it

used to work. And as an investor, we want balance. Most investors want some sort of balance. And that

has to do with how stocks are doing and what could be happening with the bond market. That's the

balance part. And I want to go over that because I have some insights on it here as we are now in deep into 2025.

Mm-hmm. Great. Because of so many questions about that. What should my balance be? What depends on your age, of course, and then lots of other factors, right?

Right. So here's the way I would talk about it is that I don't know the exact balance, the right and perfect balance for anyone ever because it's a little bit of a moving target and they evolve. So first of all, 60-40 really is just to me synonymous with a balanced portfolio of stocks and bonds. And it could also include some other areas that also

produce income. And there are lots of other areas that are technically a little bit different

than bonds, a little bit different from stocks. I think about real estate investment trust. I think

about the commodity sector. I think about referred stocks, closed-in funds, lots of other energy pipeline

companies. So there's lots of other areas. But if we're just looking at those two, anytime you're

not 100% in bonds or 100% in stocks, you have a balance. And the question is, what became popular

30 plus years ago is the concept of having risky assets like stocks paired with

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