This article is another in my series of articles about common mistakes that the average individual investor makes in their overall portfolio allocation. For these articles, I drew from the 20 years of experience I had at Charles Schwab in dealing with clients face-to-face and helping them meet their financial goals.

In previous articles, I wrote about two areas which were dramatically under-represented in most clients portfolios – commodities and international securities. There is a third area which I found to also be under-represented and that is fixed income investments. Many clients had little or no exposure to fixed income investments.

The most difficult task I believe for allocating funds to fixed income investments is to choose what type of bonds an investor should buy from the myriad of choices available. Obviously, an investor's specific financial circumstances will dictate the final choices. In this article, I will choose an area of the  fixed income world that I believe most investors should currently allocate funds toward.

TREASURY MARKET FANTASY

Right now the Treasury market is enjoying it's own titillating little fantasy. It is the ultimate dream of everyone in the bond world. It is nirvana for bond market junkies. It is the D-word – deflation.

The media and financial authorities have fallen in love with the word deflation. The dim bulbs that appear on CNBC air are constantly talking about deflation. This fact alone sets off alarm bells in my head. When is the last time that the conventional wisdom as presented on CNBC ever came true? In fact, when is the first time?

I believe that all of this deflation talk is simply a way for the financial authorities to prepare the public for incredibly massive government spending over the next several years. It simply helps to justify even more massive government bailouts and spending programs. Look at the amount already spent on the “bailout” - nearly $8 trillion. I fully expect that figure to rise by tenfold or more.

I notice that CNBC conveniently seems to have forgotten about how the Treasury market crazies got it wrong in 2003. There was a huge deflation scare at that time too, although on a smaller scale than the current nuttiness. What followed that deflation scare? One of the most massive upward moves in history of the price of many commodities.

Right now, the Treasury market crazies have priced in massive deflation that will occur in the United States for the next decade or longer. They have also priced in corporate default rates of 21%! And this is in the face of massive printing of money and multi-trillion dollar annual deficits.

There is a major headwind that the Treasury market crazies will soon be facing.