The Purpose of Balancing Bonds With Stocks

From time to time you hear complaints from financial gurus that it makes little sense to balance stock holdings with bonds when both may move together in the securities markets. The idea is that one should go up when the other goes down as a means of balancing a securities portfolio.

But there is another factor involved if you attempt to time the markets to tell you how much bonds or stocks to hold. The matter of timing can be risky because it often fails. 

Moreover, asset allocation with set percentages of stocks and bonds is a form of market discipline and has value as such. (See the Earl J. Weinreb NewsHole® comments.)