Correlations of Stock and Bond Returns Globally

How should investors think about the correlation between stock market returns and bond market returns when constructing a diversified portfolio? In their April 2024 paper entitled “Stock-Bond Correlation: Theory & Empirical Results”, Lorenzo Portelli and Thierry Roncalli examine theoretical and empirical relationships between the stocks-bonds return correlation and other variables/conditions. They focus on:

• Monthly returns of long-term government bonds and country stock markets (for example 10-year U.S. Treasury notes and the S&P 500 Index for the U.S.), but consider other choices for bond duration and stock portfolio.
• 48-month rolling returns when assessing correlation dynamics.

Using government bond and country stock market returns for the U.S. during 1965 through 2023 and for other developed, developing and emerging markets across Europe, the Americas and Asian as available through 2023, they find that:

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