How To Invest
With U.S. interest rates so low, Mather said, people holding cash are experiencing a tax through inflation. As such, he suggests that investors shift their focus away from developed countries with activist central banks, high government debt levels and paltry interest rates in favor of countries that traditionally were seen as riskier in the past but are now on sounder financial footing than their more developed counterparts.
"Most investors in an index fund are exposed to countries with the most risk," said Mather, citing the U.S. Europe and Japan's prevalent role in many global indexes. "Investors need to get away from their home bias mindset."
He said Pimco believes that bond yields will remain constrained over the next several years, but that dislocations will occasionally occur in the different pockets of the fixed-income market.
"You need active strategies to pick up a few percentage points in yield that's been taken away by central banks," Mather said.
For his part, Colas said investors in the current low-yield environment should find fixed-income substitutes like "reasonable" dividend-yielding stocks. He also believes precious metals are a source of non-correlated assets in an increasingly correlated investment landscape.
Gartman still thinks that bonds are a good place to be, even if the 30-year bond market rally is probably in the early stages of its much-anticipated reversal.
"The action in the bond market tells me it's the right place to be" he said, adding that the unwinding of the longstanding rally will likely be a slow process.
That said, he cautioned that the laws of physics take effect when interest rates are so low because small rate movements can have "egregiously large" implications on bond prices.
"You need to be really, really, really, really careful," Gartman said.