My 401K shows its down 14% YTD.

I have a little bit of money in stable value and was thinking if the market doesn't come back down near the lows I'll move that money into Broad Market Bond Index

??

There's zero reason to have a single dollar of your 401k in the stable value fund or bonds unless you're less than 10 years from retirement. And even then it should be very little.

Stop looking at it and stop trying to change the allocations thinking you're gonna make things better. All you're doing is making things worse.

By 'market', are you referring to the stock market or the US Aggregate Bond Market? For bond investments, you need to look at what interest rates are doing...if yields start to go lower next year, bonds could see positive pricing movement because the price of bonds or bond funds moves inversely with yields. The risk is if rates are not done rising.
Take a look at AGG, notice it's bounce upward last week in response to the CPI number coming in lower than expected - which led to bond yields going lower.
Hope that helps

Edit...I agree with Jerry above that long term bonds and cash are not the best investments for long term growth that beats inflation.

The fund is measured by Bloomberg US Aggregate Bond Index.



I was putting money into bonds because financial advisors and even the 401K managed fund all say to have some 20% or so in bonds


I am long term...solid 12 years before retirement and probably longer before taking withdrawls

jamey said:

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My 401K shows its down 14% YTD.

I have a little bit of money in stable value and was thinking if the market doesn't come back down near the lows I'll move that money into Broad Market Bond Index

??

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how old are you?

if you are under 50 I wouldn't be putting too much into broad bond indexes yet.

I'm 53

jamey said:

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The fund is measured by Bloomberg US Aggregate Bond Index.



I was putting money into bonds because financial advisors and even the 401K managed fund all say to have some 20% or so in bonds


I am long term...solid 12 years before retirement and probably longer before taking withdrawls

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Based strictly on history with no promise of the future, find the 12 year period(s) where bonds outperformed equities. If you're not planning on touching that money for 12 years, make your decision based on what you find and how much you believe it will reflect the next 12 years.

jamey said:

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I'm 53

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the rule is generally 60/40 but I think that's just WAY too conservative.

I'm 52 next week, and have only 10% of my corporate account in bonds.

from all of my reading and experience, the more diversified you are the better you are going to do in retirement. have a percentage of everything:

real estate
crypto
individual stocks
bonds
gold
ETF
low fee mutual funds
emerging market funds
retirement date funds where the manager is actually increasing bond exposure every year as you age
I Bonds (I don't have these in my portfolio yet)

with inflation you are going to need 8-9% returns just to stay even for the next several years and you aren't going to get that with most bond funds.