The idea here is, if anyone bought Swiss or German bunds 4 years ago and went into a coma, a coma that he came out of today, he almost surely would be taking most (if not all) the profits from the trade and anyone would agree with doing that. What I'm suggesting here, a small short in the futures, equivalent to 1/3 or maybe 1/2 of the duration exposure of the portfolio (and how to extract the duration exposure size from a stock portfolio is a more difficult question but I believe it can be done). This is the equivalent to taking some profits off the table from the long duration/bond trend that has played out massively over the last few years and benefited everyone, stock, bond and real estate investors. I could argue that not doing that is what is risky
Why would this not be a good idea? Sure, there might be an extra cost to the short futures as compared to the outright bond sale but it should be small relative to the potential loss that will be averted if the person DOESN'T take some off the table