Have you ever wondered what investment today is the most out of favor?
Most of us never even ask this question, since such investments by definition don’t even appear on our radar screens. But, as contrarians constantly remind us, we are vulnerable to making big mistakes by blindly following the consensus, as well as to missing some truly once-in-a-generation opportunities.
A great example is U.S. Treasurys in 1981, when inflation had been running in the double-digits for several years, the 10-year T-Note yielded close to 16%, and you could hardly give Treasurys away. Retirees who decades previously had invested their portfolios in bonds had suffered what some had described as the biggest destructions of wealth in history.