A friend from the old neighborhood called me last weekend with one question.
His advisor set him up at 60/40 the year he retired. Sixty percent stocks, forty percent bonds. He wanted to know if that still means what it used to.
It is a fair question for anyone my age. For decades that mix was the default for money that has to last. The stocks grow. The bonds hold the floor.
Own an IRA or a 401(k) at one of the big firms? Then some version of that mix is probably sitting in your account right now.
The floor gave way not long ago. In 2022, stocks and bonds fell in the same year.
A 60/40 mix lost about 17.5%. That was its worst year since 1937.
The trigger was the Fed, which raised rates fast to fight inflation. When rates rise, the bonds you already own lose value. New ones simply pay more.
The Fed meets again on Tuesday and Wednesday. Its new chair, Kevin Warsh, has named October as one of his decision points for the rest of the year.
Here is why the timing matters more for us than for anyone.
About 4.1 million Americans turn 65 each year through 2027. That is more than 11,000 a day, on a calendar printed decades ago.
At 65, the account changes jobs. It stops growing for later. It starts paying for now.
A bad year in that first stretch hurts more than the same bad year at 45. You are selling shares to pay the bills while they are down. Planners call this sequence risk. It means the order of the returns matters, not just the average.
So the real question is not whether markets rise over twenty years. It is which year they fall.
Where the cohort’s money sits this quarter, and what the account is asked to do.
Now the part most people miss. Both halves of the mix have changed shape, and in different ways.
The 40: the bonds
Bond prices move opposite to interest rates, so this half answers to the Fed. In 2022, the 10-year Treasury lost about 17.8%, its worst year on record.
The 60: the stocks
An index fund was meant to spread your money across 500 companies. Today the ten biggest carry more than double the weight they did a decade ago. One of them is Tesla.
Put those together and the safe-looking mix carries two bets most owners never chose. One on the Fed. One on a handful of technology giants.
My friend went quiet on the line for a second. Then he asked the question all of us end up asking. Who wins when the whole cohort figures this out at once?
The honest catch sits at the kitchen table. Guaranteed income is not free. Those contracts carry fees and surrender charges, and money locked inside one cannot go anywhere else.
That is why plenty of people my age keep part of the 60 working hard. Much of the market’s recent growth has come from a few AI names. Elon Musk sits close to the middle of that crowd.
The arithmetic
60/40 portfolio down about 17.5% in 2022, its worst year since 1937: Morgan Stanley and Eaton Vance analysis. 10-year Treasury down about 17.8% in 2022, its worst year on record: as reported by The Motley Fool. Ten largest S&P 500 holdings at about 38% of the index: Slickcharts index weights, October 23, 2026. About 17.8% at the end of 2015: index-concentration data, as reported. Fed held its target range at 3.50% to 3.75% on September 16, 2026; next meeting October 27 and 28; Chair Kevin Warsh naming October and December as decision points: Federal Reserve and press coverage, October 2026. About 4.1 million Americans turning 65 each year from 2024 through 2027: Alliance for Lifetime Income, Peak 65 research. Record U.S. retail annuity sales of $464.1 billion in 2025, the fourth straight annual record: LIMRA, 2026. More than 11,000 a day is Boomers Trade’s own division of the annual figure.
The Fed speaks on Wednesday afternoon. Before then, pull up your statement and find the two lines, stocks and bonds. Then ask what the stock line actually holds. The birthdays keep arriving either way. The schedule does not take weekends off.
Andrew
Boomers Trade is written by someone getting older right alongside you, and watching who profits from it.
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