The Simple Stock Market Hedge No One Talks about. It's Wall Street's New "Free Lunch."

Why a bond ladder is the most overlooked simple strategy that most investors don't know about. Because no one's getting rich telling them about it.

Photo by Anh Nguyen on Unsplash

If you have what you’d consider “enough money so that I’d rather not lose a lot of it as I try for long-term growth,” there’s an age-old strategy that has, for all intents and purposes, aged out. Not because it is ineffective. Just the opposite; it has just entered a new golden era.

Earlier today, my latest Barchart.com article about bond ladders published. Even if you have not though of yourself as a “bond person,” I encourage you to read it. Because it is really not about bonds.

It is about whether you want to take advantage of what I think is the real free lunch on Wall Street now. The old saying refers to that as “diversificiation.” But guess what? Even the S&P 500 is no longer diversified. It is controlled by an ever-shrinking number of huge stocks. As I’ve written here before, the rest just do not matter as much as they used to.

You can be excused for not knowing anything at all about bond investing. And I’m not talking about buying the TLT ETF, and losing 40% when rates spike higher, as that popular fund did from 2022-2023. But that’s when the golden era for bonds and laddering bond maturities actually began.

You see, the 10-year US Treasury Bond, which is sort of the “S&P 500 of the bond market,” is yielding more than it has for the vast majority of the past 25 years.

That means that locking in that return now, while not a rival to 15% annual stock market returns as we’ve had recently, does establish a “floor” return level for your whole portfolio. And to me, there’s some piece of mind in that.

It is why my bond ladder, which I discuss in that new article you can link to above, is the single largest portion of my own family’s portfolio. You read that correctly. “Mr. ETF Yourself,” the guy who waxes poetic about stocks, ETFs, technical analysis and ROAR Scores, has more of his own wealth in a simple, set it and forget it, bond ladder. Importantly, I hedge that bond portfolio against rising rates. But if rates fall sharply in the coming years. Ka-ching! Bond prices can produce some hefty total returns.

If this intrigues you, I suggest the following:

1. Read my new Barchart.com article about bond ladders

2. Attend (or catch the recorded video replay of) this Tuesday’s live session, where I will walk attendees through the why and how of creating your own bond ladder, to your own specifications. Just like I did. Maybe it will help you sleep better, as it does for me.

Even if you are not particularly jacked up to learn about bond investing, you might at least benefit from the first part of that presentation, where I quickly review the history of the stock market. The part where, as has happened in the past, many years of wealth accumulation can be reversed before many investors can figure out what to do. Maybe putting this knowledge in your back pocket will give you an edge going forward.

There’s no cost to attend this live session.

I feel confident saying that there are not too many others on this topic currently. Why? Because buying individual bonds, on your own is not something financial firms make very much money on. There’s no “AUM” fee, no big commissions.

Like I said, 2026 is, to me, the year where simple replaces the FOMO and the complexity. It doesn’t have to be that stressful to manage your own money. You just need to learn how to be your own portfolio manager. This session, and the set that follow it, will help you get better at that.