The bond market has been on quite a tear of late. With lower yields and higher prices, bond market articles have been on the front pages of The New York Times as well as other prominent articles in their business section.

Stocks on the other hand ended last month with their sixth consecutive down week. With bonds moving higher in price and stocks moving lower maybe there is something new going on. Perhaps your stock portfolio hasn’t been performing as it once did. Is something new happening?

From our vantage point, there is nothing new going on in the markets. The bond bear market began in 2012. Others may argue with me on this but that gives us a sense of how long a topping (or turning) pattern may take to develop or be fully recognized.

The bond (price) topping pattern or yield bottoming pattern has unfolded over many years already. Perhaps we will see something similar time-wise with stocks, but perhaps not. Perhaps the reason your stock portfolio isn’t performing the way you think it should is because we are in a similar topping pattern currently with stocks. If this is the case, which I believe, the key issue we need to address is one of risk versus reward.