I think that you are looking at things over too a short a period here. In general over the long term you would expect increasing returns from, in order, cash, bonds, property, equities (the last two could be close and "equities" is very general and doesn't reflect the wide variety of risk/reward profiles on offer). Looking at things over 6 months doesn't really make sense as it's too short a period to reflect smoothing of transient volatility. Note that bond prices generally move inversely with respect to interest rates and the latter have been increasing of late.