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Investment Weekly

Diversify the diversifiers
12 December 2025

    Chart of the week – Diversify the diversifiers

    Chart of the week – Diversify the diversifiers

    For the first two decades of the 2000s, the performance of stocks and bonds was negatively correlated. So, when stocks underperformed, bonds tended to do better. But that relationship has become less reliable in the post-pandemic era, driven by inflation volatility and policy uncertainty. It has left investors reconsidering old assumptions and sparked a search for “bond substitutes” as a source of diversification and portfolio resilience.

    More from this week:

    Market Spotlight

    • Credit control

    Lens on…

    • Odd jobs
    • Reserve Boost for India
    • ZAR struck

    Read the full commentary PDF, 3.39MB