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We skipped past the “fiscal cliff,” but we may still fall through the debt ceiling in a couple of months.

As the politicians lurch from one crisis to the next, investors may wonder how they make any money this year when government is run by cliffhangers and the economy can’t kick out of second gear.

Faced with nervous investors, worried about the next crisis, St. Louis financial advisers make calming noises. They may recite the stockbroker’s Desiderata: Go quietly amid the noise and haste and remember the peace that can be found in asset allocation.

Asset allocation — how one divvies money up between stocks, bonds and other things — is the key to controlling risk in uncertain times.

Done right, it can boost returns over the long run, while lowering your consumption of Alka Seltzer, Sominex and scotch.

The first step is to find the balance between your stomach for risk and your need for money.

Don Kukla of the Moneta Group of financial planners in Clayton, hands clients a folder full of numbers. It shows how various mixes of stocks and bonds have performed for the half-century ending in 2011.

That was a half-century filled with seven U.S. recessions, three American wars, an oil embargo, and periods of double-digit inflation, double-digit unemployment and price controls.

Yet, an investor could have still done well.

For instance, a portfolio of 90 percent stocks and 10 percent bonds turned in a 10.2 percent average annual return. But it was a rough ride. The worst single year, in 2008, loss was 31.9 percent.

If a loss like that would make you sell it all — or seek a high window — better get more conservative.

“If we knew how everybody would react should 2008 happen again, asset allocation would be a lot easier,” Kukla said.

By contrast, a 50/50 portfolio earned 9.1 percent annually — still a fine ride — with the biggest loss at 12 percent. A wimpy mix of 90 percent bonds and 10 percent stocks scored 7.4 percent, with the worst year down only 3.3 percent.

The common advice is for savers to be braver when they’re many years away from needing the money, then lower risk as the date draws near.

This is a long-term strategy, and not for people looking to hit a quick home run. It also requires a little courage. You must rebalance when allocations get far out of whack. When the stock market tumbles, that means selling bonds and buying stocks.

Of course, the next 50 years may look nothing like the last. These days, rock-bottom interest rates may have raised the danger level in bond prices while also while lowering their returns.

Still, advisers preach the wisdom of mixing things up. “Diversification is the real key,” says Michael Kowalkowski, chief investment officer at Enterprise Trust in Clayton. “The most important thing is to try to get low-correlated assets mixed together,” he said. By that, he means assets that zig while others zag.

That’s getting harder to do, especially with stocks. Globalization has made U.S. and foreign stock markets march in the same direction, although not at the same speed.

Only once since 2000 has the S&P 500 Index of key U.S. stocks gone a different direction than the Europe Australia Far East Index, or EAFE, a main measure of developed-world stocks outside the U.S. That year, 2011, the S&P gained 2 percent while the euro crisis knocked the EAFE down 12 percent.

Then there was 2008, the greatest market bellyflop of them all, when nearly everything fell at once. U.S. Treasury bonds were the major exception as money all over the world ran to the shelter of Uncle Sam.

But diversification still helps even within a stock portfolio, advisers say. Larry Swedroe. Clayton money manager and prolific author of investment books, recommends allocating half the equity share to U.S. stocks, with a quarter given to stocks in the developed world, such as Europe and Canada, and a quarter to emerging markets, countries such as China and Brazil.

He recommends index mutual funds for stocks, due to their low expenses and his belief that few active managers can outperform the indexes over the long run.

The fixed-income allocation causes more disagreement among advisers. Kukla, for instance, is putting clients in mutual funds that use multiple hedge fund strategies in an effort to boost yield, but still try to contain risk. The funds he uses are out of reach for investors who don’t buy through an investment adviser.

Some advisers like Master Limited Partnerships. Most invest in the pipes and tanks that move and store oil, fuel and natural gas. To avoid a big tax headache, it’s best to invest through mutual funds.

Others think you should stick to boring bonds. “Don’t try to get cute. It can backfire,” says Rick Hill of Hill Investment Group in Clayton.

Move to high-yield bonds, emerging market debt, master limited partnerships and you get stocklike risk, but with perhaps less potential upside. Stick to high-quality bonds with short to intermediate terms — meaning up to seven years duration.

Swedroe, of Buckingham Asset Management. is even more conservative. He likes bank CDs, where there’s no risk at all under the FDIC’s $250,000 insurance ceiling. He also likes TIPs — Treasury Inflation Protected Securities — where rates rise and fall with inflation, and some federal agency bonds.

Those offer terrible yields. The highest-paying five-year CD, offered by CIT Bank, is yielding 1.8 percent, according to Bankrate.com. The official yield on five-year TIPS is actually negative-1.5 percent, but you also get the rate of inflation.

The purpose of bonds is to moderate the risk in the rest of your portfolio, notes Swedroe, not to make you rich.

BEYOND STOCKS, BONDS

Stocks and bonds are the core of asset allocation, but you can reduce risk by adding dollops of real estate and commodities. That’s true even when those investments are on the risky side, notes Swedroe in his book, “Investment Mistakes Even Smart Investors Make.”

Standard deviation is a measure of price volatility. The higher the number, the wilder the ride. The S&P 500 had a standard deviation of 17 percent from 1991 to 2007, and a total return of 11.4 percent per year. By contrast, the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index had a wilder 26 percent deviation and returned only 6.8 percent a year. But the jumps and dives came at different times and tended to smooth each other out. So, someone who added a 5 percent dollop of commodities to their stock portfolio would have had the same 11.4 percent return, but with less volatility shown by a 16 percent standard deviation.

“Commodities appear to be a lower-returning, risky asset. Yet their inclusion has historically improved portfolio performance,” says Swedroe.

Investors can buy shares in individual real estate investment trusts, or through REIT mutual funds. Commodities should be bought through mutual funds and used sparingly.

If all this is too much to worry about, the mutual fund industry will be glad to help.

“Target date” mutual funds automatically reduce risk as the date draws near. They are designed for retirement savings. Investors can use them for other purposes, but since they’re designed to fund a long retirement, they’ll still have a portion in stocks when the date arrives.

That can be a problem in a humdinger financial panic such as 2008. The average fund with a target date 2010 lost 25 percent of its value, according to Morningstar, as stocks tanked and bonds slumped. That’s trouble for someone two years from retirement.

Mutual fund investors should use more than one fund family, says Kowalkowski. All the managers in one family may be depending on the same research team. If they get it wrong, you’re in trouble.

Jim Gallagher is a reporter at the Post-Dispatch