The financial gods were kind again to the major asset classes in July. Everything was up, and mostly with strong gains.
As our table below shows, it was hard to lose money last month, a.k.a. a refreshing change from the recent past. Of course, if you were sitting mostly in cash, there was little to celebrate with a virtual zero to the month’s total return for 3-month T-bills. Inflation-linked Treasuries didn’t do much better, but everything else did.
Emerging market stocks were the big winner, closely followed by REITs, foreign developed market and U.S. equities. Risk, in other words, paid off quite handsomely in July. With such widespread gains of more than modest means, our Global Market Index—a passively allocated mix of the major asset classes—also posted a strong total return of 5.5% last month.