Investor Education
Why Investors Should Rethink Traditional Income Strategies
Why Investors Should Rethink Traditional Income Strategies
Humans are creatures of habit. We all have daily routines, whether it’s walking the same lunchtime route, watching a familiar TV show, or cooking the same meal over and over again. Once we develop a pattern, it can take a drastic change to convince us to rethink our approach.
One such shake-up to ingrained investment habits is the changing landscape of income investing.
In today’s infographic from New York Life Investments, we explain why traditional long-term bonds may not be as effective as they were in the past, and which additional income strategies investors can consider.
The Status Quo
For years, investors have relied on traditional longer-term bonds as the centerpiece in an income portfolio. These debt instruments usually pay out interest to investors on a predetermined schedule, providing a steady income stream investment. Historically, they have also been subject to less volatility than equities.
The typical bond portfolio is diversified, much like the Bloomberg Barclay’s U.S. Aggregate Index. Here’s how the sectors are broken down in the index:
Sector | Market Value |
---|---|
Treasury | 39.5% |
Government-Related | 5.8% |
Corporate | 25.0% |
Securitized | 29.7% |
Unfortunately, this income strategy has been less effective in recent years. Over the last decade, core bond duration has increased by 1.5 years while yields have decreased by almost 2%. Essentially, interest rate volatility has increased—but investors are less compensated for the risk.
In light of low rates and higher expected market volatility, it’s critical that investors explore other income solutions. Luckily, there are many lesser-known asset classes for investors to consider.
Additional Income Strategies: An Investor’s Choice
When investors decide how to re-allocate, they can keep these objectives in mind:
- Preservation of principal (risk level)
- Pursuit of capital (growth potential)
- Perseverance in markets (long-term objectives)
Which additional income strategies can they explore?
Taxable Municipal Bonds
Issued by state and local governments, the yield of taxable munis has historically been higher than that of other sectors. Taxable munis also have a strong credit rating—over 76% of U.S. municipal bonds outstanding are A+ rated or better.
Insured Municipal Bonds
Investors can get additional downside protection with insured municipal bonds, which are guaranteed to pay interest and principal back by private insurers. They have historically performed similar to munis while capturing less of the “downside”, often providing an attractive risk-adjusted return for income investors.
Short-duration, High-yield Bonds
Bonds with a shorter duration and higher yield can be a lower volatility approach to achieving the same income investing goals.
Yield and Risk in Bonds (July 1, 2014 – June 30, 2019):
Bond Type | Yield | Standard Deviation (annualized) | Yield per Unit of Risk |
---|---|---|---|
U.S. Aggregate Bonds | 2.49 | 2.94 | 0.85 |
High Yield Bonds | 6.05 | 5.60 | 1.08 |
Low-duration, High-yield bonds | 5.00 | 3.90 | 1.28 |
Short duration funds have lower interest rate risk, and can offer attractive yield per unit of risk.
Yield-Centric Equities
Equities can also play a role in an income focused portfolio. Investors should look for established companies that are achieving:
- Growth in free cash flow
- Stable or growing dividends
- Share buybacks or debt reduction
Over the last 40+ years, the annual compound return of stocks with growing dividends have outperformed dividend cutters on the S&P 500 by more than 4%.
Preparing for Your Future
Maximizing the benefit from new income opportunities can take time. For this reason, it’s important to consider potential portfolio changes now, so that these strategies can play out in the lead up to retirement years.
It may be tempting to stick with the status quo—both in daily routines and investment strategies—but those who proactively adjust their approach will be able to maximize their potential.
Technology
Thematic Investing: 3 Key Trends in Cybersecurity
Cyberattacks are becoming more frequent and sophisticated. Here’s what investors need to know about the future of cybersecurity.


Thematic Investing: 3 Key Trends in Cybersecurity
In 2020, the global cost of cybercrime was estimated to be around $945 billion, according to McAfee.
It’s likely even higher today, as multiple sources have recorded an increase in the frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks during the pandemic.
In this infographic from Global X ETFs, we highlight three major trends that are shaping the future of the cybersecurity industry that investors need to know.
Trend 1: Increasing Costs
Research from IBM determined that the average data breach cost businesses $4.2 million in 2021, up from $3.6 million in 2017. The following table breaks this figure into four components:
Cost Component | Value ($) |
---|---|
Cost of lost business | $1.6M |
Detection and escalation | $1.2M |
Post breach response | $1.1M |
Notification | $0.3M |
Total | $4.2M |
The greatest cost of a data breach is lost business, which results from system downtimes, reputational losses, and lost customers. Second is detection and escalation, including investigative activities, audit services, and communications to stakeholders.
Post breach response includes costs such as legal expenditures, issuing new accounts or credit cards (in the case of financial institutions), and other monitoring services. Lastly, notification refers to the cost of notifying regulators, stakeholders, and other third parties.
To stay ahead of these rising costs, businesses are placing more emphasis on cybersecurity. For example, Microsoft announced in September 2021 that it would quadruple its cybersecurity investments to $20 billion over the next five years.
Trend 2: Remote Work Opens New Vulnerabilities
According to IBM, companies that rely more on remote work experience greater losses from data breaches. For companies where 81 to 100% of employees were remote, the average cost of a data breach was $5.5 million (2021). This dropped to $3.7 million for companies that had under 10% of employees working from home.
A major reason for this gap is that work-from-home setups are typically less secure. Phishing attacks surged in 2021, taking advantage of the fact that many employees access corporate systems through their personal devices.
Type of Attack | Number of attacks in 2020 | Number of attacks in 2021 | Growth (%) |
---|---|---|---|
Spam phishing | 1.5M | 10.1M | +573% |
Credential phishing | 5.5M | 6.2M | +13% |
As detected by Trend Micro’s Cloud App Security.
Spam phishing refers to “fake” emails that trick users by impersonating company management. They can include malicious links that download ransomware onto the users device. Credential phishing is similar in concept, though the goal is to steal a person’s account credentials.
A tactic you may have seen before is the Amazon scam, where senders impersonate Amazon and convince users to update their payment methods. This strategy could also be used to gain access to a company’s internal systems.
Trend 3: AI Can Reduce the Cost of a Data Breach
AI-based cybersecurity can detect and respond to cyberattacks without any human intervention. When fully deployed, IBM measured a 20% reduction in the time it takes to identify and contain a breach. It also resulted in cost savings upwards of 60%.
A prominent user of AI-based cybersecurity is Google, which uses machine learning to detect phishing attacks within Gmail.
Machine learning helps Gmail block spam and phishing messages from showing up in your inbox with over 99.9% accuracy. This is huge, given that 50-70% of messages that Gmail receives are spam.
– Andy Wen, Google
As cybercrime escalates, Acumen Research and Consulting believes the market for AI-based security solutions will reach $134 billion by 2030, up from $15 billion in 2021.
Introducing the Global X Cybersecurity ETF
The Global X Cybersecurity ETF (Ticker: BUG) seeks to provide investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of the Indxx Cybersecurity Index. See below for industry and country-level breakdowns, as of June 2022.
Sector (By security type) | Weight |
---|---|
Cloud | 28.0% |
Network | 25.1% |
Identity | 17.7% |
Internet | 15.0% |
Endpoint | 12.8% |
Country | Weight |
---|---|
🇺🇸 U.S. | 71.6% |
🇮🇱 Israel | 13.2% |
🇬🇧 UK | 8.2% |
🇯🇵 Japan | 5.5% |
🇰🇷 South Korea | 0.9% |
🇨🇦 Canada | 0.6% |
Totals may not equal 100% due to rounding.
Investors can use this passively managed solution to gain exposure to the rising adoption of cybersecurity technologies.

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