[zppln]

What are some realistic alternatives to US markets here? Selling is one thing, the question is what to buy instead? I mean, everyone starting to buy european instead would be great for stock prices, but it wouldn't make the underlying assets more valuable, right?

[toast0]

If you divest US bonds, you would probably put them into bonds from other nations (and corporate bonds from non-US companies), easiest thing is to try to find a index to track; Vanguard's BNDX tracks the Bloomberg Global Aggregate ex-USD Float Adjusted RIC Capped Index (Hedged).

In a mark to market world, the value of a bond is its acquisition cost, so buying bonds enough to raise prices increases their value, but not their coupons or their face value. It's hard to make sense of the value of a sequence of payments, it's reasonable to consider the present value and the market price is an easily justified present value for a bond.

Selling bonds and buying stocks is a different thing altogether. Selling US stocks and buying EU stocks wouldn't change the value of the underlying assets, however, having an increased stock price does have benefits for the company when issuing new shares or bonds.

[dripdry45]

Large institutions have been moving in this direction for about a year. I just put together a fairly more stable and diversified portfolio that is effectively only about 15% in the US. It involves some short-term private equity, lots of commodities, European cyclicals and financials, some small Deep value, energy and climate change infrastructure is on solid ground and being well funded around most of the world… they really are plenty of bright spots and lots of good advice out there, even from public letters from places like Van Eck, Piko, GMO funds, and others.

There are a number of very important categories to avoid, like convertibles, but overall it’s quite possible if you have a little bit of acumen with investing.

[jacquesm]

Eurobonds. It may actually happen if this continues. But given the speed of the usual EU decision process I would not be surprised if it takes them longer than the current US administration to finally agree on the various terms. And that's good for Europe in multiple ways.

https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/eu-budget/e...

In the meantime: German, Dutch, UK (technically not EU), Swiss, Nordic paper is also a good substitute and regardless all you really want to do here is not to hold an asset that may well become a liability so in that sense almost anything is better.

[robinsoncrusue]

Eurozone has a looming debt crisis. ECB is actively capping the yields for countries bonds from Spain and Portugal which are showing stress signals. This will not end well for ECB this time around if they end up something like 2012.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-185202466

[marcyb5st]

Swiss bonds are super safe, but they have ~0 interest rate and so you lose out on inflation.

[ares623]

Just needs to be more valuable than the US bonds that are 100% gonna tank I guess

“I don’t need to outrun the bear. I just need to outrun you. “

[toomuchtodo]

Sovereign debt of a more politically stable nation state or other monetary union, if you are investing at these levels. If you're an individual, you have more options, although there will be fierce debate about the risk profile (as US Treasuries were historically considered to be risk free).

https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=449401

[arjie]

The disciple went to his master and said "Master, I am considering stopping doing a thing and starting to do a different thing. But I am not certain what the new thing is that I should be doing".

The master turned to the disciple and said: "A better thing"

The disciple was enlightened.

EDIT: Oh damn it. The entirety of the comment was "Sovereign debt of a more politically stable nation state or other monetary union" at the time I replied. Ah well.

[loeg]

Which nation states might you consider more politically stable than the US, even now?

[kavalg]

But I am having a hard time identifying this union/nation. Unfortunately, it feels like the EU is set on a downward trajectory.

[blitzar]

> What are some realistic alternatives to US markets here

There is nothing particularly interesting or sexy about US treasuries. You could replace a holding of $8bn to $80bn with equivalent or better rated bonds in a half hour or so.

Replacing that sort of allocation of stocks or commodities would be way harder as returns on those assets are not as simple as "pays a 4% coupon each year" - finding an equivalent of Apple or Nvidia is not a trivial task.

[SilverElfin]

It depends on the goal. People buy bonds to play a certain role in their overall investment strategy. China and India have been quietly selling American bonds and focusing on gold / silver / etc. BRICS has also talked for a while about forming their own shared virtual currency but that is further away. You can buy other assets as a store of value too.

[downrightmike]

Same thing that happened to Spain after the New World gold and silver came in, Inflation (limited local supply to spend on and so prices raise) and debt payments, ultimately leaving Spain poor.

[tick_tock_tick]

There aren't any it's why the US takes in such crazy flows.

[zrn900]

> What are some realistic alternatives to US markets here?

It seems to be precious metals. And at this point in time, especially silver. Even Indian government seems to be stockpiling silver.

[stevenwoo]

At first I was leaning toward FGLD but didn't consider that current admin would blow up everything US, there are European alternatives to FGLD that OP might want to investigate that have physical metal reserves (there are many alternatives that represent various tiers of involvement in mining versus just holding precious metals, I'm speculating OP does not want to possess precious metals themselves).

[munk-a]

Well, if we're talking about the value of the underlying assets - then I imagine you have all your savings in gold because the PE ratios in the US stock market are already absolutely insane.

If you're trying to escape an expected upcoming crash you don't necessarily need to look for growth but instead stability. Precious metals are always popular but simply shifting a portion of your money into an index fund of a different stock exchange should help minimize your exposure to any catastrophic loss.

This is, of course, not financial advice.

[rixrax]

Canada?

[heathrow83829]

i've wondered this myself. I thought that everyone was selling bonds and just buying equities, gold and bitcoin. isn't that only game plan? bonds aren't investible anymore for anything more than 5 year time horizon.

[thatguy0900]

Bitcoin is going down, wherever they're fleeing it's not that