Category Archives: bonds

Before You Take Any Investment Advice, Consider the Source – Version 2.0

18 Wednesday Sep 2019

Posted by in asset allocation, Average Returns, behavioral finance, bonds, Charlie Munger, confirmation bias, Consumer Finance, emerging markets, Fama, finance, financial advice, Financial Advisor, financial goals, financial markets, Financial Media, Financial News, financial planning, financial services industry, Geometric Returns, Individual Investing, individual investors, interest rates, Internet Bubble, investing, investing advice, investing, investments, stocks, bonds, asset allocation, portfolio, investment advice, investments, Markowitz, Modern Portfolio Theory, MPT, personal finance, portfolio, risk, risk tolerance, stock market, Stock Market Returns, Stock Market Valuation, stock prices, stocks, Uncategorized, Valuation, volatility, Warren Buffett

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I originally wrote about this topic five years ago.  However, I think that it may even be more relevant today.  You may have heard about behavioral finance/economics and how cognitive biases plagued individual investors when making financial and investing decisions especially during volatility times in the financial markets.  Sometimes an overlooked topic is the fact that whomever provides you with financial advice will invariably be affected by those same biases.  Yes, even the professionals cannot escape them.  One of the most prevalent and insidious cognitive biases is called “anchoring”.  In layman’s terms, “anchoring” describes the tendency of people to form a particular belief and then stick with it unless there is an incredible amount of evidence to the contrary.  It is just part of human nature; we generally do not want to admit that we were mistaken or flat out wrong.

Now when I am talking about considering the source, I am not referring to the person’s qualifications such as having a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), Certified Financial Planner (CFP), or Chartered Market Technician (CMT) designation.  I am referring to the person’s investing paradigm.  For the most part, financial professionals are influenced greatly by the time period in which they first start out in the financial services industry.  The first several of years have an outsized impact on their investing recommendations throughout the rest of their careers.  I will give you an example in life, and then I will talk about Warren Buffett and even myself.  Take special note that I am including myself in this “anchoring” cognitive bias within the context of investing.

There have been many studies that show that the kind of music you listen to most during your teen years becomes your preferred type of music.  For example, there are many people in their early 40’s that love 80’s rock.  They would prefer to listen to that over any type of new music.  My parents are in their seventies now, and they love to listen to Peter, Paul, & Mary, the Beach Boys, Neil Diamond, Motown, and lots of one-hit wonders from the 50’s and 60’s.  Think about your own taste in music.  Does this ring a bell?  Most people fall into this category, and it is almost subconscious.  You like a certain genre of music best, and it sticks with you.  Did you have a family member that was really into music and had a collection of records?  Sometimes you get introduced to music at an even younger age, and you are drawn to it.  You listened to it during your formative years.  The same goes for investing in a rather similar way.

If we take a look at Warren Buffett, he was definitely influenced by the time period in which he started learning about investing seriously.  Buffett read Security Analysis by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, and he knew right away that he wanted to go to Columbia to get his MS in Economics.  The themes in the book seemed to resonate with him.  I have heard stories that the value investing class with Ben Graham and Warren Buffett was really a conversation between the two of them.  The rest of the classmates just sat back and enjoyed the “show”.  Warren Buffett also learned a lot from a lesser known gentleman, Phil Fisher.  Phil Fisher wrote the classic treatise on “scuttlebutt” called Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits.  “Scuttlebutt” is essentially trying to gain every last piece of information you can about a company prior to investing.  This technique includes, not only speaking to management and reading annual reports, but talking to competitors, suppliers, current employees, past employees, and several other sources.  Warren Buffett remarked in the past that he was “15% Fisher and 85% Graham” in terms of his investing style.  Most experts on the career of Buffett would say that the percentage has shifted toward Fisher quite a bit, especially with the massive size of Berkshire Hathaway now.

I did not pick Warren Buffett because of his long-term track record of stellar performance.  I only picked him because many individuals are familiar with Warren Buffett.  Warren started out working for Graham in the early 50’s after he graduated from Columbia in 1951.  If you look back at this time in history, the stock market had finally gained back its losses from the great crash of October 1929.  The baby boom was in full swing, and the US economy was on overdrive in terms of growth.  The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was set up back in 1933 after the crash once an investigation was done regarding the causes of this debacle.  There were two important promulgations from the SEC in 1934 and 1940 that were issued in order to ensure that company information was available to the public and not fraudulent.  Well, there were still scams, but they were harder to pull off.  (As an aside, the Investment Advisor Act of 1940 did not stop Bernie Madoff from stealing billions of dollars several years ago).  Buffett and Graham (and Graham’s partner, Newman) loved to get their hands on any piece of information they could.  In fact, Buffett used to read entire books on every single public company.  During that time period, information was so disjointed and hard to get.  However, it was now available to the public and professional investors who could do much more thorough analyses.  The financial markets had far more inefficiencies back then.  This time period was before the dawn of Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT), the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), and the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMT).  Thus, there was a great deal of opportunities for individuals like Buffett who soaked up all the information he could find.

Buffett started his own investment partnership in the mid 50’s.  It was essentially a hedge fund in most respects.  Without getting into too much of the details, Buffett was able to earn 20% more on average than the Down Jones Average annually until 1969.  The stock market at this time seemed to be overpriced in his estimation, so Buffett disbanded the partnership.  He referred his partners to Bill Ruane of the famed Sequoia Fund.  Bill was a former classmate of Warren, and he amassed quite a record himself.

So if we look at Buffett’s beginning career, he saw how doing your homework really paid off.  In fact, there are even stories that Ben Graham would use examples in his lectures about companies he was going to buy.  After class let out, all the students rushed to call, or see directly, their stock brokers to buy the companies Graham presented on.  Buffett learned from Graham the importance of valuing a company based upon verifiable evidence and not market sentiment.  Fisher’s lessons showed him the benefit of accumulating information from different sources in order to truly understand a business prior to investing.  These formative years are still with Buffett.  Now Charlie Munger, Buffett’s Vice Chairman at Berkshire Hathaway, has been an influence as well.  What is little known is that they grew up together in Omaha, Nebraska, and they were able to meet during this same time period.  This introduction to investing left an indelible mark on Warren Buffett that permeates his investing career today.

Obviously I am no Warren Buffett, but I started investing in mutual funds at age 13 in November 1987.  What got me so interested in the stock market?  Obviously Black Monday on October 19, 1987 really caught my attention.  It was not really the crash that really piqued my interest though.  My father told me that the market drop of 508 points on that day was an overreaction (down over 20% amazed me).  I did not know much about stocks, but it seemed to me like the world was ending.  At least that was how the nightly news portrayed things.  My father said watch the market over the next several days.  To my absolute amazement, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) went up almost 290 points in the next two trading sessions.  Wow!  This turn of events was really weird to me.  How could stocks move around in value so greatly?  I thought that all the big money investors in the stock market really knew what they were doing.  However, most everyone was caught by surprise by Black Monday.  The other interesting thing for me was that 1987 turned out to be a positive year for the DJIA.  If you want to get your friends’ attention, you can ask them what the return of the DJIA was for 1987 and 1988 (negative return).  Most people will get it wrong.

Well, these events left a mark on me.  When I learned more about investing and was exposed to Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) and the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMT), I really did not think it was true given my start in investing back in the latter portion of 1987.  How could the value of the entire U.S. economy be worth 20% less after one day of trading?  Now, the stock market is normally efficient and stock prices are correct, but I knew that there were inflection points in the stock market where rationality was thrown out the door.  Therefore, when I learned about Mr. Market and the vicissitudes and vagaries of the stock market from Ben Graham’s books, I liked that metaphor and way to characterize volatility in the stock market.  For better or worse, I really do not care for the academic, ivory tower analysis of behavior in the stock market.  I cling more to focus investing, value investing, and seeing the financial markets as complex adaptive systems.  I would fall into the camp of Warren Buffett and the great hedge fund investor, George Soros.  Both men have said that they would never be able to pass the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) exam.  The CFA is now the standard designation for all portfolio managers of stocks and bonds.  I tried studying for it, but a lot of it made little sense to me.  I guess that is why I think it is funny when Buffett says he wants to gift money to universities to install permanent chairs in business schools to teach Modern Portfolio Theory forever.

Most of the financial professionals you meet will range in age from twenties to sixties.  You should always ask them when they started investing or their career as a Financial Advisor.  Here are the ten major events that will cover those individuals:

  • The 1973-1974 severe bear market;
  • The Death of Equities article from Business Week magazine in 1979;
  • Black Monday in October 1987;
  • The Bond Bubble Bursting in 1994;
  • The Asian Contagion and Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) incidents in 1997-1998;
  • The Barron’s article in December 1999 that questioned the relevance of the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett;
  • The Bursting of the Internet Bubble in April 2001;
  • The Financial Crisis and ensuing Great Recession of 2008-2009;
  • The “Lost Decade” of Returns from the S&P 500 from 2001-2010 when stocks averaged approximately 2% annually.
  • Managing Money is Easy. Look at my investing record over the past 10 years (2009-2018).  Note that the annualized return of the S&P 500 index over that period was 13.13%.

These major inflection points in the financial markets will have a great effect on your financial professional’s recommendations for investment portfolio allocation.  In fact, I met a Financial Advisor that tells his clients that they can expect to earn 12% annually from stocks over the long term.  He uses this return for modeling how much clients need to invest for retirement.  He was introduced to investing around 1996 which is when the stock market went gangbusters.  I know another Financial Advisor that tells his clients to never put more than 50% of their money in common stocks.  He tells this to all of his clients, even if they are in their thirties and have 30+ years until retirement.  He started advising clients in 2007, and he lost a great many clients in 2008.  Therefore, he wants to have limited downside risk for two reasons.  First, he has seen how much the stock market can drop in one year.  Second, this gentleman wants to ensure that his clients to not close accounts and flee to other financial professionals because the stocks in their portfolio go down 30-40% in a single year.

The importance today of the long, extended bull market of the past 10 years is extremely important to take into account for all individual investors.  A recent stretch of 13.13% annualized stock returns makes it seem that investing systematically over the long term is the correct investment strategy.  I would not disagree with that thought.  However, Financial Advisors with 10 years of experience or less will only tell clients what they would do hypothetically in the event of a major market decline in the stock and bond markets.  Hypotheticals and backtesting are all well and good.  But it has been my experience, that there is no substitute for actually investing during periods of extreme volatility and major stock market declines (20% or more).  For example, what was the best stock investment strategy right after the Internet Bubble implosion in terms of the asset class?  The best performing asset class for the next decade was to have a larger than normal allocation to emerging market stocks (think Ticker Symbol EEM or VWO).  Do you think that your Financial Advisor would have the stomach to recommend this investment to you after seeing the NASDAQ index fall by over 50%?

As you can see, the start of anyone’s investing career has an impact on their outlook for the financial markets and how to set up a portfolio properly.  I am not saying that any of this advice is “wrong” per se.  My only point is that you need to probe your Financial Advisor a little bit to understand the framework he/she is working with.  Thus, you can refer to the aforementioned list of ten major events in the history of the financial markets.  These events really shape the investment paradigm of all of us.  And, of course, I will admit that I am no different.

With that being said, most investment strategies recommended by Financial Advisors are borne out of those individuals first few years with the financial markets.  Some financial professionals are more bullish than others.  Others focus on downside risk and limiting volatility in investment portfolios.  Still others utilize complicated mathematics to build investment portfolios that are optimized.  Therefore, you need to understand your risk tolerance and financial goals very well.  You have your own personal experience with the market.  If your Financial Advisor is somewhat myopic and focused on the past repeating itself in the same way over and over, you need to be careful.  History does repeat itself, but the repeating events will be caused by much different factors in most cases.  Unfortunately, the financial markets and market participants are always adapting to changing investment strategies, global economic GDP growth, interest rates, geopolitical events, stock price volatility, and a whole host of other things.  You can learn from the past, but I urge you not to be “stuck” in the past with your Financial Advisor’s “anchoring” cognitive bias at the expense of setting up an investment portfolio that will allow you to reach your financial goals and match your risk tolerance.

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Bonds Have Risks Other Than Rising Interest Rates. Dividend Stocks are not Substitutes for Bonds.

24 Sunday Jul 2016

Posted by in academics, asset allocation, bond basics, bond market, Bond Mathematics, Bond Risks, bonds, Fabozzi, finance, finance theory, financial advice, Financial Advisor, financial goals, financial markets, Financial Media, financial planning, financial services industry, Fixed Income Mathematics, foreign currency, Frank Fabozzi, Individual Investing, individual investors, interest rates, investing, investing advice, investing information, investing tips, investment advice, investments, math, MBS, personal finance, rebalancing, rebalancing investment portfolio, rising interest rate environment, rising interest rates, risk, risks of bonds, Search for Yield, statistics, types of bonds, volatility, yield

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The main reason why Financial Advisors are recommending that individual investors sell bonds is that interest rates are likely to rise over the next 3-5 years or more.  Although those sentiments have been a familiar refrain over the last 3-5 years though.  Well, I would tend to agree that interest rates are poised to rise at some point toward the end of this decade.  However, interest rate risk is only one of the risks of bonds.  In fact, the size of the bond market dwarfs the stock market.  When Financial Advisors are talking about bonds, they tend to be referring only to US Treasury bonds, corporate bonds, and municipal bonds.  Interest rate risk greatly affects these bonds indeed.  With that being said, they tend to conflate the interest rate risk of these bonds with the entire bond market.  Remember that interest rates have dropped from 16.30% on the 1-month US Treasury bill back in 1981 to roughly 0.25% today.  Therefore, bond prices have been rising for over 35 years and most financial professionals outside of the fixed income markets have forgotten (or if they are younger than 50) how bonds normally work, especially in a rising interest rate environment.

But does it even matter really? Yes.  Here is an urgent note to all individual investors:  “Beware of financial professionals that recommend dividend stocks or other equities as replacements for your fixed income allocation”.  What I mean by this is that the volatility of stocks is far greater than bonds historically.  Yields may be very low in money market funds, US Treasuries, and in bond mutual funds now.  However, your risk tolerance must be taken into account at all times.  While it is true that many dividend-paying stocks offer yields of 3% or more with the possibility of capital appreciation, there also is significant downside risk.  For example, as most people are aware, the S&P 500 index (which represents most of the biggest companies in America) was down over 35% in 2008.  Many of those stocks are included in the push to have individual investors buy dividend payers.  With that being said, stock market declines of 10%-20% in a single quarter are not that uncommon.  If you handle the volatility of the stock market well, there is no need to be concerned.  However, a decline of 10% for a stock paying a 3% dividend will wipe out a little more than 3 years of yield.  Individual investors need to realize that swapping traditional bonds or bond mutual funds is not a “riskless” transaction, meaning a one-for-one swap.  The volatility and riskiness of your portfolio will go up commensurately with your added exposure to equities.  Sometimes financial professionals portray the search for yield by jumping into stocks as the only option given the low interest rate environment.

While your situation might warrant that movement in your portfolio allocation, you need to be able to accept that the value of those stocks is likely to drop by 10% or more in the future just taking into account normal volatility in the stock market historically (every 36 months or so in any given quarter).  Are you able to handle that volatility when looking at your risk tolerance, financial goals, and age?The purpose of this blog post is to discuss the risk factors associated with bonds in greater detail.  Most bonds, such as Treasury notes and bonds, corporate bonds, and municipal bonds, will go down in value when interest rates go up.  Conversely, they will go up in value when interest rates decrease.  This characteristic of these types of bonds is called an inverse relationship.  For a primer on how most bonds function normally, I have posted supplementary material alongside this post.  You can refer to it to brush back up on bonds and how they work, and I also provide a historical look at interest rates over the last 35 years.  Here is the link to that prior blog post:https://latticeworkwealth.com/2014/01/02/a-bond-is-a-bond-is-a-bond-right-should-you-sell-bonds-to-buy-stocks-supplementary-information-on-how-bonds-work/

There are many risk factors associated with investments in bonds.  A great overview of those risks can be found in Fixed Income Mathematics the Fourth Edition by Dr. Frank Fabozzi who teaches at Yale University’s School of Management.  Most fixed income traders, portfolio managers, and risk managers use his Handbook of Fixed Income Securities as their general guidebook for approaching dealing with the trading, investing, and portfolio/risk management of owning fixed income securities.  Suffice it to say that he is regarded as one of the experts when it comes to the bond markets.  Dr. Fabozzi summarizes the risks inherent in bonds on page 109 of the first text referenced above.  The risks are as follows:

  • Interest-rate risk;
  • Credit risk;
  • Liquidity risk;
  • Call or prepayment risk;
  • Exchange-rate risk.

Most of fixed income folks and myself would add inflation risk, basis risk, and separate credit risk into two components.  Bonds have two types of risk as it relates to payment of principal and interest.  The first risk is more commonly thought of and referred to as default risk.  Default risk is simply whether or not the company will pay you back in full and with timely interest payments.  Credit risk also can be thought of as the financial strength of the company.  If a company starts to see a reduction in profits, much higher expenses, and drains of cash, the rating agencies may downgrade their debt.  A downgrade just means that the company is less likely to pay back the bondholder.Here is an example to illustrate the difference more fully:  a company may have a AA+ rating from Standard & Poor’s at the beginning of the year, but, due to events that transpire during the year, the company may get downgraded to A- with a Negative Outlook.  Now the company is still very likely to pay back principal and interest on the bonds, but the probability of default has gone up.  As a point of reference, AAA is the highest and BBB- is the lowest Standard & Poor’s ratings to be considered investment grade.  You will note that the hypothetical company would need to be downgraded four more times (BBB+, BBB, BBB- to BB+) to be considered non-investment grade or a “junk” bond.   Bond market participants though will react to the downgrade though because new potential buyers see more risk of default given the same coupon.  So even though the company may not default eventually on the actual bond, the price of the bond goes up to compensate for the interest rate required by the marketplace on similarly rated bonds to attract buyers.Now I will address the full list of risks affecting bonds outlined by Dr. Fabozzi above.  Any bond is simply an agreement between two parties in which one party agrees to pay back money to the other party at a later date with interest.

All bonds have what is referred to as credit (default portion) risk.  Credit risk in general is simply the risk one runs that the party who owes you the money will not pay you back (i.e. default).  What is lesser known or thought about by individual investors is interest-rate risk and inflation risk.  These two risks are usually missed because investors tend to think that bonds are “safe”.  Interest-rate risk relates to the fact that interest rates may rise, while you hold the bonds (spoken about at length in the beginning of this blog post).  When financial pundits make blanket statements about selling bonds, they are referring to this one risk factor normally.  Inflation risk means that inflation may increase to a level higher than your interest rate on the bond.  Thus, if the interest rate on your bond is less than inflation or closer to inflation from when you bought the bond, your purchasing power goes down.  The prices of goods and services go up faster than the interest you earn on the bond.  Call risk refers to instances where some companies have the option to redeem your bonds in the future at an agreed upon price.  This is normally done only when interest rates fall. Prepayment risk is a more specialized case of call risk and refers to people paying their mortgages (or credit cards, home equity loans, student loans, etc.) back sooner than expected.  Most people group these two risks into a category called reinvestment risk.  Think about the concept in this manner:  many people refinanced their mortgages because interest rates went down.  They did so because they could lower their total mortgage payment.  Well, companies do the same thing if they have the option.  Companies can redeem bonds at higher interests and issue new bonds at lower interest rates.  Chances are that, if you are the owner of the redeemed bonds, you will be unable to find as high of an interest payment currently if you want to buy a bond with similar characteristics of the company issuing the bonds you own before.The other three risks I mentioned above are less commonly discussed and not quite as important.

Exchange-rate risk exists because sometimes a company issues bonds in a currency other than its own.  For example, you will sometimes hear the terms Yankee bonds or Samurai bonds.  Since the company is paying you interest and principal in a foreign currency that money may be worth more or less depending on what happens in foreign exchange markets in the future.

Liquidity risk refers to the phenomenon that there are certain crisis times in the market where very few, if any bond market participants, are willing to buy the bonds you are trying to sell.  Therefore, you might have to take a bigger loss in order to entice someone to buy the bonds given the current macro environment.

Basis risk is a more obtuse type of risk that institutions deal with.  Basis risk essentially refers to anytime when interest rates on your bond are pegged to another interest rate that is different but normally behaves in a certain way (referred to as correlation).  Now most of the time, the behavior will follow the historical pattern.  However, during times of stress like a liquidity and/or credit crisis, the correlations tend to break down.  Meaning you can think you are “hedged” but, if the historical relationship does not hold up, your end return will be nothing like what you had expected.  These two risks are not something that individual investors need to focus on for the most part, since these types of bonds are not normally owned by them.I will admit that this list is quite lengthy and, quite possibly, a bit too detailed and/or complicated.  However, I wanted to lay them all out for you.  Why?  When you hear Financial Advisors recommend that you sell a large portion of your bonds, and/or hear the same investment advice from the financial media, they normally are really only referring to interest-rate risk primarily and secondarily inflation risk as well.  As you can see from the description above, the bond market is far more complex than that to make a blanket statement.Now, as I usually say, I would never advise individual investors to take a certain course of action in terms of selecting specific bonds or not selling bonds to move into more stocks.  However, I am saying that you should feel comfortable enough to ask your Financial Advisor why he/she recommends that you sell a portion of your bonds.  If the answer relates only to interest-rate risk, I would probe the recommendation further.  You can explain that you know that is the case for Treasury notes/bonds, municipal bonds, and corporate bonds.  However, there are a whole host of other fixed income securities with different characteristics and risks.  Now I am not referring solely to Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), although the residential and commercial markets for these are in the trillions of dollars.  There are bonds and notes that have floating interest rates which means that as interest rates go up, the interest rate you receive on that security goes up.  Not to mention that different countries are experiencing different interest rate cycles than the US (stable or downward even).The complete list is too in-depth to cover in a single blog post.  My goal was to provide you with enough information to at least ask the question(s).  Your risk tolerance and financial goals might make a move from bonds to stocks the best course of action.  With that being said, you also have the option of selling bonds and keeping the money in cash or investing in the different types of bonds offered in the fixed income markets while keeping your total allocation to fixed income nearly the same.  Thinking holistically about your portfolio, you may be increasing the riskiness of your portfolio beyond your risk tolerance or more than you are aware unbeknownst to you by moving from bonds into stocks.  This is something you definitely want to avoid.    It can turn out to be a rude awakening and hard lesson to learn one or two years from now.

The First Key to Successful Stock Investing is Understanding and Accepting Reality – Updated

16 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by in asset allocation, Average Returns, bonds, business, college finance, Consumer Finance, Education, Emotional Intelligence, finance, finance theory, financial advice, financial goals, financial markets, financial planning, financial services industry, Geometric Returns, Individual Investing, individual investors, investing, investing advice, investing information, investing tips, investment advice, investments, math, personal finance, portfolio, risk, risk tolerance, statistics, stock market, Stock Market Returns, stock prices, stocks, Uncategorized, volatility

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This particular topic is so important that I decided to revisit it again. The discussion below adds further refinements and creates an even stronger tie to behavioral finance (i.e. how emotions affect investment decisions).  Additionally, for those of you who desire more in-depth coverage of the math and statistics presented, I have included that at the very end of this article.  Let’s delve deeper into this topic and what is meant by “reality”.

The first key to successful stock investing has more to do with your emotions than a fundamental understanding of what causes stocks to move up or down. Emotions about money can be a powerful thing and cause people to behave in irrational ways.  One of the most common phrases passed on to investors as a piece of wisdom is to “buy low and sell high”.  However, study after study has shown that most individual investors fail to heed that advice.  Why does this happen?  Well, I would submit the real cause is behavioral and based upon incomplete information.

Most individual investors are told when they start investing in stocks via mutual funds and/or ETFs to expect an annual return of 8% to 9% per year. You will find that many financial calculators to help you plan for retirement on the Internet have that as one of the inputs to calculate the growth of your portfolio over time.  While that information is not too far off the mark based upon historical returns of the S&P 500 stock index, the actual annual returns of stocks do not cooperate to the constant frustration and consternation of so many investors.

That brings us to the first key to successful stock investing:  The actual yearly returns of stocks very rarely equal the average expected.  The most common term for this phenomenon is referred to as volatility.  Stocks tend to bounce around quite a bit from year to year.  Volatility combines with the natural instinct of people to extrapolate from the recent past, and investing becomes a very difficult task.  I will get deeper into the numbers at the very end of the post for those readers who like to more fully understand the concepts I discuss.  I do need talk in general about annual stock returns at this point to expand upon the first key.

Below I have provided a chart of the annual returns of the S&P 500 index for every year in the 21st century:

 

Year % Return
2001 -11.90%
2002 -22.10%
2003 28.70%
2004 10.90%
2005 4.90%
2006 15.80%
2007 5.50%
2008 -37.00%
2009 26.50%
2010 15.10%
2011 2.10%
2012 16.00%
2013 32.40%
2014 13.70%
2015 1.40%

 

What is the first thing you notice when looking at the yearly returns in the table? First, you might notice that they really jump around a lot.  More importantly, none of the years has a return that is between 8% and 9%.  The closest year is 2004 with a return of 10.9%.  If the only piece of information you have is to expect the historical average over time, the lack of consistency can be extraordinarily frustrating and scary.  In fact, individual investors (and sometimes professional investors too) commonly look back at the last couple of years and expect those actual returns to continue into the future.  Therein lies the problem.  Investors tend to be gleeful when returns have been really good and very fearful when returns have been very low.  Since the average never comes around very often, investors will forget what returns to expect over the long run and will “buy high and sell low”.  It is common to sell stocks after a prolonged downturn and wait until it is “safe” to buy stocks again which is how the sound advice gets turned around.

I will not get too heavy into math and statistics, but I wanted to provide you will some useful information to at least be prepared when you venture out to invest by yourself or by using a financial professional. I looked back at all the returns of the S&P 500 index since 1928 (note the index had lesser numbers of stocks in the past until 1957).  The actual annual return of the index was between 7% and 11% only 5 out of the 88 years or 5.7%.  That statistic means that your annual return in stocks will be around the average once every 17 years.  The 50-year average annual return for the S&P 500 index (1966-2015) was approximately 9.8%.  Actual returns were negative 24 out of 88 years (27.9% of the time) and greater than 15% 42 out of 88 years (48.8% of the time).  How does relate to the first key of stock investing that I mentioned earlier (“The actual yearly returns of stocks very rarely equal the average expected”)?

Well, it should be much easier to see at this point. If you are investing in stocks to achieve the average return quoted in so many sources of 8% to 9%, it is definitely a long-term proposition and can be a bumpy ride.  The average return works out in the end, but you need to have a solid plan, either by yourself or with the guidance financial professional, to ensure that you stick to the long-term financial plan to reach the financial goals that you have set.  Knowing beforehand should greatly assist you in controlling your emotions.  I recommend trying to anticipate what you do when the actual return you achieve by investing in stocks is well below or quite high above the average in your portfolio.  Having this information provides a much better way to truly understand and your risk tolerance when it comes to deciding what percentage of your monies to allocate to stocks in my opinion.

When you look back at the performance returns for stocks, it makes more sense why investors do what they do from the standpoint of behavioral finance. That is how emotions affect (all too often negatively) investment decisions.  If an individual investor is told at the outset that he or she can expect returns of 8% or 9% per year, the actual annual returns of stocks can be quite troubling.  Having that information only leads to a general disadvantage.  When stock returns are negative and nowhere near the average, individual investors tend to panic and sell stocks.  When stock returns are quite higher than the average, individual investors tend to be more euphoric and buy even more stocks.  This affect is magnified when there are a number of consecutive years with one of those two trends.  If stock returns are essentially unchanged, most individual investors become disengaged and really do not even see the point of investing in stocks at all.

I believe it is extremely important to know upfront that stocks are likely to hit the average return once every 17 years. That statistic alone is a real shocker!  It lets individual investors truly see how “unusual” the average return really is.  Plus, there is a better explanation for fear and greed.  Stock market returns will be negative once every 4 years.  Keep in mind this does not even include stock returns that are below the average yet still positive.  Lastly, every other year the stock market returns will be above the average (in my case I was measuring above the average with the definition of that being a stock market return greater than 11%).  It is no wonder why individual investors get greedy when it looks like investing in the stock market is so easy after seeing such great returns.  Conversely, the occurrence of negative returns is so regular that it is only natural for individual investors to panic.  Since the average only comes around approximately once every two decades, that is why confusion abounds and investors abandon their long-term financial plans.

I will readily admit sticking to a long-term financial plan is not easy to do in practice during powerful bull or bear markets, but I think it helps to know upfront what actual stock returns look like and prepare yourself emotionally in additional to the intellectual side of investing.  Now I always mention that statistics can be misleading, conveniently picked to make a point, or not indicative of the future.  Nevertheless, I have tried to present the information fairly and in general terms.

Additional Information on Stock Market Returns (Discussion of Math and Statistics):

Please note that this information may be skipped by individual investors that are scared off by math in general or have no desire to dive deeper into the minutiae. One of the first things to be aware of is what expected returns for stocks are.  An expected return is what the most likely outcome would be in any particular year.  Expected returns provide misleading results when there is a high degree of variability in the entire dataset.  In the case of stock market returns, there is an incredible amount of variability.  The industry term for variability, which is the statistical term, is volatility.  Due to the fact that the expected return almost never happens, it would be wise for the financial services industry to truly and better define volatility.  Most individual investors do not know that there is far more of a range of possible outcomes for stock market returns.  Individual investors associate hearing average returns with some volatility from Financial Advisors or financial media in the same way as the classic “bell curve”.  As discussed in further detail above, the outcomes do not even come close to approximating the “bell curve”.

One important thing to be aware of when it comes to actual performance returns of an individual’s investment portfolio is that average/expected values are not very important. In fact, they really lead to a distorted way of looking at investing.  Average/expected values are based on arithmetic returns, where the overall growth in one’s investment portfolio is tied to geometric returns.  The concept of geometric returns is overlooked or not fully explained to individual investors.  Here is the perfect example of how it comes into play.  Let’s say you own one share of a $100 stock.  It goes down 50% in the first year and then up 50% in the second year.  How much money do you have at the end of the second year?  You have the original $100, right?

Not even close. You end up with $75.  Why?  At the end of the first year, your stock is worth $50 ($100 + $100*-50%) after decreasing 50%.  Since you begin the second year with only that $50, that is why you end up having $75 ($50 + $50 * 50%).  The average annual return is 0% ((-50% + 50%) divided by 2)) for the two-year period.  Whereas your geometric return is negative 13.4%.  Essentially that number shows what happened to the value of your portfolio over the entire timeframe and incorporates the ending value.  Think of it as having $100 + $100 * -13.4% or $86.60 at the end of year one and then $86.60 + $86.60 * -13.4%) or $75.  Note that you never actually have $86.60 as the portfolio’s value at any time, but the geometric return tells you how much money you actually earned (or lost) over the entire period and how much money you end up with, otherwise known as the terminal value of your portfolio.  The geometric return will ALWAYS differ from the arithmetic return when a negative return is introduced as one of the outcomes.  As an individual investor, your primary concern is the terminal value of your portfolio.  That is the dollar value you see on your brokerage statement and is the actual amount of money you have.

Financial professionals forget to focus on geometric returns or even bring them up to clients. This omission is important to individual investors because negative returns have an outsized effect on the terminal value of an investment portfolio.  For example, in the example above, it is quite clear that losing 50% and then gaining 50% do not “cancel each other out”.  The negative percent weighs down the final value of the portfolio.  That is why it is extremely important to use the geometric return of the portfolio.  This result is due to the fact that the compounding of interest is not linear.  It is a geometric equation which is why the geometric mean comes into play.  Without going fully into the explanation of those equations, the main takeaway for investors when it comes to annual returns is that negative returns have more of an effect than positive returns.

Taken together, it is important to utilize the concept of multi-year geometric averages. Individual investors never want to simply add up the annual returns of a series of years and then divided by the number of years.  That result will overstate the amount of money in the investment portfolio at the end of the period.  The preferred approach is to use the geometric average which is referred to as the annualized average return.  That percentage is the number most relevant to investors.  Additionally, longer timeframes of these returns are best to look at given the extreme amount of volatility in yearly stock market returns.  It gives a better picture of how the stock market has moved.

When looking at the stock market returns for the S&P 500 index over five-year periods using the period 2001-2015, they yield surprising yet informative results. The five-year returns from 2001-2005, 2006-2010, and 2011-2015 were 0.54%, 2.30%, and 12.57%, respectively.  Valuable information comes from looking at extended periods of time using the same time increment.  The overall return during 2001-2015 was 5.01%.  The effect of these longer timeframes smooths the stock market return data, but even then the stock market returns vary quite a bit.  Note that the overall return from the entire historical period of the S&P 500 index is roughly 9.50%.  These three selected chunks show two periods of underperformance and one year of outperformance.  The reason stock market returns tend to hover around the historical average is due to the fact that these returns are tied to the overall growth the economy (most commonly Gross Domestic Product – GDP) and corporate profits.  In the meantime though, stock market returns can vary a lot from this expected return.  However, they are unlikely to do so for incredibly long periods of time.

By incorporating the understanding of volatility and geometric returns into your understanding of the “reality” of stock market returns, you will be able to better refine your own risk tolerance and how to craft your long-term financial plan. A better grasp of these concepts makes one far less likely to react emotionally to the market, either with too much fear or too much greed.

The Top 5 Most Read Articles in my Investing Blog During 2015

29 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by in asset allocation, bond market, bonds, Consumer Finance, Fed, Federal Reserve, finance, finance theory, financial advice, Financial Advisor, financial advisor fees, financial advisory fees, financial goals, financial markets, financial planning, financial services industry, Individual Investing, individual investors, interest rates, investing, investing advice, investing information, investing tips, investment advice, investment advisory fees, investments, passive investing, personal finance, portfolio, reasonable fees, reasonable fees for financial advisor, reasonable fees for investment advice, reasonable financial advisor fees, rebalancing, rebalancing investment portfolio, rising interest rate environment, rising interest rates, risk, risk tolerance, statistics, stock market, stock prices, stocks, Yellen

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The most popular articles read over the past year included some writings from a couple of years ago and were also on a myriad of topics. The listing of articles below represents the most frequent viewings working downward.

  1. Are Your Financial Advisor’s Fees Reasonable? Are You Actually Adding More Risk to Your Ability to Reach Your Long-Term Financial Goals? Here is a Unique Way to Look at What Clients Pay For.

 

This article has consistently drawn the most attention from readers of my investing blog. Individual investors have learned from me and many others that one of the most important components of being successful long-term investors is by keeping investment costs as low as possible.  This particular writing examines investing costs from a different perspective.  In general, the higher the investment costs an individual investor incurs, the higher the allocation to riskier investments he/she must have to reach his/her financial goals.

Link to the complete article: https://latticeworkwealth.com/2013/10/26/are-your-financial-advisors-fees-reasonable-are-you-actually-adding-more-risk-to-your-ability-to-reach-your-long-term-financial-goals-here-is-a-unique-way-to-look-at-what-clients-pay-for/

2. Are Your Financial Advisor’s Fees Reasonable? Here is a Unique Way to Look at What Clients Pay For.

 

This article is closely followed by the previous one in terms of popularity and forms the basis for that discussion actually. The general concept contained in this writing is that most asset managers now charge investors a fee for managing their investments based upon Assets under Management (AUM).  The fee is typically 1% but can be 2% or higher.  The investment costs to the individual investor per year are the total balance in his/her brokerage account multiplied by the fee which is commonly 1%.  However, the 1% grossly misrepresents the actual investment costs because the individual investor starts off with the total balance in his/her brokerage account.  The better way to express the fees charged per year is to divide the AUM percentage by the growth in the portfolio over the year.  That percentage answer will be quite a bit higher.

Link to the complete article: https://latticeworkwealth.com/2013/08/07/are-your-financial-advisors-fees-reasonable-here-is-a-unique-way-to-look-at-what-clients-pay-for/

3)  Rebalancing Your Investment Portfolio – Summary

 

Earlier in the year, I compiled a three-part series that examined the concept of rebalancing one’s investment portfolio. Rebalancing is an excellent investing strategy to learn about and apply at the end of the year.  Rebalancing in its simplest definition is the periodic reallocation of the investment percentages in one’s investment portfolio back to an original model after a passage of time.  This summary of rebalancing provides a look at rebalancing that is helpful for novice individual investors through more advanced folks.

Link to the complete article: https://latticeworkwealth.com/2015/11/25/rebalancing-your-investment-portfolio-summary/

4)  How to Create an Investment Portfolio and Properly Measure your Performance: Part 2 of 2

 

While this article is the second part of a discussion on the creation of an investment portfolio, it is arguably the more important of the two because it looks at a topic too often not relayed to individual investors. This writing talks about the importance of measuring the performance of your investment portfolio’s investment returns.  The financial media tends to focus solely on comparing your portfolio to the performance of the S&P 500 Index.  That comparison is “apples to oranges” the vast majority of the time because most individual investors have many different types of investments in their portfolios.  Therefore, I show you how institutional investors measure the performance of their investment portfolios.  The concept is broken down into smaller parts so it is very understandable and usable for individual investors.

Link to the complete article: https://latticeworkwealth.com/2013/07/19/how-to-create-an-investment-portfolio-and-properly-measure-your-performance-part-2-of-2/

5)  How Can Investors Survive in a Rising Interest Rate Environment? – Updated

 

Although this particular article was first published a couple of years ago, the content is even more valuable today. The Federal Reserve increased the target range for the Federal Funds Rate by 0.25% on December 16, 2015 and has indicated that more interest rate increases are likely in the future.  Thus, we have entered a period in which interest rates are generally headed higher over the next several of years.  Most financial pundits will bemoan this type of environment because higher interest rates mean that the prices of most bonds go down.   It makes it harder to earn any investment returns from bonds.  However, there are a number of investments and investment strategies that benefit from an increasing interest rate environment.  This article examines six different things individual investors can do.

Link to the complete article: https://latticeworkwealth.com/2013/11/30/how-can-investors-survive-in-a-rising-interest-rate-environment-updated/

 

I hope you enjoy these popular articles from my investing blog. My goal is to keep on releasing more information in 2016 to assist individual investors in navigating the world of investing.  Thank you to all my readers in the United States and internationally!

Rebalancing Your Investment Portfolio – Summary

25 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by in asset allocation, bonds, Consumer Finance, Emotional Intelligence, finance, finance theory, financial advice, financial goals, financial markets, financial planning, Individual Investing, individual investors, investing, investing advice, investing information, investing tips, investment advice, investments, personal finance, portfolio, rebalancing, rebalancing investment portfolio, risk, risk tolerance, stock market, Uncategorized

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With the end of the year fast approaching, it is an excellent time to discuss the concept of rebalancing one’s investment portfolio.  The simplest definition of rebalancing is the periodic reallocation of an investment portfolio back to the original percentages desired.  The fluctuations of the financial markets over time will inevitably alter the amount of exposure in one’s investment portfolio to different types of assets.  These changes may cause the portfolio to be suboptimal given an individual investor’s financial goals and tolerance for risk.  Knowing about rebalancing is so important because it is one of the most effective ways to eliminate, or at least reduce, the emotions surrounding investment decisions that affect even professional investors.  Additionally, numerous academic studies have concluded that 85% of the overall return of an investment portfolio comes from asset allocation.

Recently, I published a three-part series of articles to define and explain the various nuances of rebalancing an individual investor’s investment portfolio.  The first article covers the definition of rebalancing in its entirety.  Furthermore, the article looks at an illustration of how rebalancing works in the real world.  It offers an introduction to this important investing tool.  The link to the complete article can be found here:

https://latticeworkwealth.com/2015/07/16/how-to-rebalance-your-investment-portfolio-part-1-of-3/

The second article discusses a unique way to get assistance with rebalancing an investment portfolio.  Many of the largest asset managers in the financial services industry, such as Vanguard, Fidelity, and T Rowe Price, offer life cycle or target date mutual funds.  These mutual funds have a predefined year that the individual investor intends to retire.  Moreover, the combination of assets in the mutual fund is structured to change over time and become less risky as the target date approaches.  Since these mutual funds report their holdings on a periodic basis, any individual investor is able to replicate the strategy for free.  Plus, another feature is that an individual investor can be more conservative or aggressive than his/her age warrants according to the mutual fund family’s calculations.  The individual investor is able to pick a target date closer than the endpoint (i.e. more conservative) or pick a target date later than the endpoint (i.e. more aggressive).  For a more comprehensive discussion of this facet of rebalancing an investment portfolio follow this link:

https://latticeworkwealth.com/2015/07/29/how-to-rebalance-your-investment-portfolio-part-2-of-3/

The third and final article discusses the most advanced feature of rebalancing utilized by a subset of individual investors.  The investing strategy is referred to as dynamic rebalancing in most investment circles.  Dynamic rebalancing follows the general tenets of rebalancing.  However, it allows the individual investor to exercise more flexibility during the rebalancing process of the investment portfolio.  Essentially the individual investor determines bands or ranges of acceptable exposures to asset classes or components within the investment portfolio.  For example, a lower bound and upper bound for the asset allocation percentage to stocks is set.  The individual investor is free to allocate monies to stocks no less than the lower bound and no more than the upper bound.  Note that the bands or ranges are normally fairly tight and applies to the subcomponents of the investment portfolio, such as small cap stocks, emerging market stocks, international bonds, and so forth.  To learn more about this fairly complex aspect of rebalancing follow this link:

https://latticeworkwealth.com/2015/11/21/how-to-rebalance-your-investment-portfolio-part-3-of-3/

The articles above capture the vast majority of information individual investors need to know about rebalancing an investment portfolio.  It is good to get a head start on learning about or reviewing this topic prior to the end of the year.  The reason is that most rebalancing plans utilize the end of the calendar year as the periodic adjustment timeframe.

How to Rebalance Your Investment Portfolio – Part 2 of 3

29 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by in asset allocation, bond market, bonds, Consumer Finance, financial advice, financial goals, financial markets, financial planning, investing, investing advice, investing information, investing tips, investment advice, investment advisory fees, personal finance, rebalancing, rebalancing investment portfolio, stock market, stocks

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In the first part of the discussion on rebalancing your investment portfolio, I outlined its definition and the most common method to do so. The web link to that particular post is listed below:

https://latticeworkwealth.com/2015/07/16/how-to-rebalance-your-investment-portfolio-part-1-of-3/

As a reminder, the definition of rebalancing is the periodic adjustment of one’s investment portfolio back to the original allocation percentagewise to the various asset classes. Over the course of time, the financial markets will vary up and down and one’s investment portfolio will change. However, the individual investor will normally have a plan on how to invest in order to reach his or her financial goals while being comfortable with the amount of risk taken by investing in the various asset classes (i.e. stocks, bonds, cash, etc.). Thus, rebalancing is simply ensuring that the investment portfolio is back in line with the original parameters of asset allocation.

In this second part of the discussion on rebalancing your investment portfolio, I will show you a different way to rebalance your investment portfolio. The same general concept applies, but, using this method, one can rely on actual published financial advice. The nice thing about this particular method is that the financial advice is free and from the most and trusted asset managers in the financial services industry. Does that sound too good to be true? Well, I invite your skepticism. That is always a healthy trait whenever someone discusses investing. Let’s delve into this a bit deeper and see if I can’t assuage your fears.

Many of the asset managers in the financial services industry offer something called target date mutual funds or life cycle mutual funds. The naming convention depends on the mutual fund company, but the financial product is the same. The idea behind these mutual funds is that they invest in a certain combination of stocks and bonds depending on when the money is needed. The mutual fund will invest more of the investment portfolio in stocks in the beginning and gradually shift that percentage to bonds and cash as the target date approaches. For example, someone who is forty years old now (2015) and wants to retire at age sixty-five would invest in a target date 2040 mutual fund. Some of the asset managers offering these financial products include Vanguard, Fidelity, and T Rowe Price. The web link to each of these mutual fund families’ offerings are listed below:

Vanguard – https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/target-retirement/#/

Fidelity – https://www.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/fidelity-fund-portfolios/freedom-funds

T Rowe Price – http://individual.troweprice.com/public/Retail/Mutual-Funds/Target-Date-Funds

Now I will not personally recommend any specific financial product; however, all these mutual fund families have excellent reputations and long track records. The benefit of this rebalancing method is that you can choose a particular target date or life cycle mutual fund that lines up with your financial goal and timeline. Each of these mutual fund offerings must periodically report their investment holdings to investors and are displayed on the mutual fund family’s website. As an individual investor, you need only replicate the recommended investments in that mutual fund. Adjusting your investment portfolio either semiannually or annually is normally sufficient. The added bonus is that you can alter the target date or life cycle mutual fund you select if your risk tolerance is different than what is offered in that portfolio. If you want to take on more risk for potential added rewards in performance returns, you can select a mutual fund with a target date later than your age would indicate. For instance, assume it is 2015 and you want to retire in 30 years, you might opt for the target date 2050 instead of 2045. Conversely, if you want to take on less risk because you are more sensitive to financial market volatility, you can select a target date closer than your age would indicate. In this case, assume it is 2015 and you want to retire in 30 years, you might opt for the target date 2040 instead of 2045. Let’s take a closer look at how this works in terms of the nuts and bolts.

For purposes of illustration only, I will utilize the product offerings of the Vanguard family of mutual funds. Assume that it is 2015 and you have 20 years until retirement (2035). Furthermore, assume that you have a normal risk tolerance for financial market volatility. If that is the case, you would select the Vanguard Target Retirement 2035 Fund (Ticker Symbol: VTTHX). The asset allocation of that target date mutual fund as of June 30, 2015 is as follows:

Asset Allocation as of June 30, 2015
Mutual Fund Percentage
Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund 53.9%
Vanguard Total International Stock Market Index Fund 28.1%
Vanguard Total Bond Market II Index Fund 12.7%
Vanguard Total International Bond Market Index Fund 5.3%
Total 100.0%

Essentially you now have an investment portfolio that selects investments for your investment portfolio to achieve your financial goals without paying a Financial Advisor. Those investment advisory fees may be 1% to 2% (or higher) of your total investment portfolio each year. Using this rebalancing approach those fees are avoided, but you are still able to see what professional money managers are recommending for free. Now there are two courses of action at this point. First, it is possible to simply invest in this particular fund through the Vanguard mutual fund family. However, you will incur additional expenses for the fund family to manage the money and make the periodic percentage allocation adjustments. Those expenses do vary by fund family and are normally somewhat reasonable but are higher at some companies than others. Second, it is possible to invest monies into ETFs or index mutual funds that match the percentage allocations to the various asset classes. Admittedly, there are times when the commissions incurred to do so are higher than simply having the mutual fund family invest in the various funds for your investment portfolio. With that being said, there is a way to invest in ETFs for free.

One of the nicest offerings that not enough people know about is that Fidelity Investments offers the BlackRock iShares ETFs free of commission. While not all of the iShares are offered, there are currently 70 ETFs registered in the program. These ETFs have some of the lowest expense ratios (percentage fee charged on assets; normally 0.20% or less per year) in the business, and the range of ETFs should cover most any recommended target date or life cycle mutual fund investment pieces you might choose to use. The current list of the iShares ETFs from Fidelity that are free from commissions are as follows:

Commission-Free iShares ETFs at Fidelity Investments – https://www.fidelity.com/etfs/ishares-view-all

The reason one would use this method to build an investment portfolio and rebalance along the way is that expenses are minimized throughout the investing process. Many investors are not aware how much “seemingly small” expenses add up and compound over time. Decades and/or years worth of fees as small as 0.50% or 1.00% annually can erode thousands, tens of thousands, or more from your investment portfolio. Which makes it harder for you to reach your investment goals or necessitates taking on more risk in order to reach the goal than you might be comfortable within your investment portfolio. (For more information on that topic, you can view one of my earliest blog posts via this web link: https://latticeworkwealth.com/2013/07/11/is-learning-about-investing-worth-it-how-about-224000-or-320000-worth/).

Here’s a summary of the usefulness of this particular rebalancing approach for your investment portfolio. You may know when your financial goal is going to come due to pay or provide for, have a general idea of the risks you are willing to take, and know a bit about the types of asset classes for investment available. However, you may lack the confidence or specific expertise to know how to create an investment portfolio and allocate percentages of money to the various asset classes. The nice thing about this method is that you can “piggyback” off of the investment ideas of some of the best money management firms in the financial services industry. You initially invest the money in your investment portfolio as is indicated on the mutual fund family’s website. Then every six or twelve months (preferably mid-year or end of the year; the most common interval is twelve months) the investment portfolio is rebalanced to exactly match the way the target date or life cycle mutual fund is currently invested in.

How to Rebalance Your Investment Portfolio – Part 1 of 3

16 Thursday Jul 2015

Posted by in asset allocation, bonds, Consumer Finance, finance, financial advice, financial goals, financial markets, financial planning, Individual Investing, individual investors, investing, investing advice, investing tips, investments, personal finance, rebalancing, rebalancing investment portfolio, risk, risk tolerance, stock market, stocks

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The first and foremost decisions for an individual investor is to determine his or her financial goals, assess his or her risk tolerance, and then develop an investment portfolio to allow one to reach those financial goals. Financial goals might be saving for retirement, a child’s college education, disbursing income while in retirement, or most any other thing that requires money to be paid in the future. Risk tolerance involves an individual investor’s willingness to take on volatility and variability in the performance returns of financial or real assets. Some investors are fine with the sometimes wild gyrations of the stock market. They might be able to withstand a 20% decline in the value of their investment portfolio and still not panic and sell. Other investors are more risk averse and do not want to see so much volatility in their investment portfolios. However, they may know they need the growth in their investment portfolio, so they reduce their exposure to stocks. Lastly, some investors may be nearing their financial goal and need to ratchet down risk in order to have enough money by not losing principal. The final step is to construct an investment portfolio that brings the two together. The financial goals can be reached but within the parameters of the investor’s risk tolerance. Note that risk tolerance in a general sense refers to the volatility of assets in one’s investment portfolio. For instance, US Treasury bills are much less volatile than stocks.

Now the financial markets will change over time as prices go up and down. Therefore, the original allocation (percentages) to stocks, bonds, cash, or other assets in the investment portfolio will be different than the one after one year goes by. It would be markedly different after five or ten years go by. That is where rebalancing your investment portfolio comes in. In this first part of this three-part discussion, I will focus on the easiest way to rebalance an individual investor’s portfolio. In the next two parts, I will expand the notion of rebalancing. In its simplest definition, rebalancing one’s investment portfolio refers to the periodic changes made to bring the investment portfolio back to the original allocation to the various investment selections. Let’s explore why this should be done.

Due to the natural ups and downs of the financial markets, an individual investor’s investment portfolio will change in composition. Remember that an investment portfolio is initially set up to allow the individual investor to reach his or his financial goals while still adhering to the amount of risk that he or she is willing to take. Well, after a year goes by, the chances are very good that the amount of money invested in stocks, bonds, cash, etc. will have changed. Thus, the investment portfolio may be more risky or less risky than intended. Moreover, the investment portfolio may not be on track to allow the individual investor to achieve his or her financial goals which is the overall goal to begin with. Additionally, rebalancing allows the individual investor to “sell high and buy low” in general. Stocks and bonds have a way of getting too expensive or too cheap as time goes by. However, the individual investor can sell the asset class that has gone up and use those funds to buy the asset class that has gone down. The technical term that you might hear is reversion to the mean. That means that over long periods of time, financial assets tend to produce an average rate of return. Hence, a rate of return much higher than the average for several years is normally followed by a period of lower returns than the average. Now let’s turn to an example with actual numbers to make things much clearer.

We can take the following scenario with various assumptions. They are as follows: the individual investor has a portfolio of $1 million at the beginning of the year, the asset allocation is 60% stocks ($600,000), 30% bonds ($300,000), and 10% cash ($100,000), during the year the stocks gain 10% ($60,000), the bonds lose 2% ($6,000) and the cash earns no interest, and, finally, the individual investor is committed to rebalancing the investment portfolio at the end of every year.

Here is the scenario:

1) Investment Portfolio at the Beginning of the Year
Type of Asset Dollar Amount Percentage
Stocks $             600,000 60.0%
Bonds                300,000 30.0%
Cash                100,000 10.0%
Total $         1,000,000 100.0%
2) Investment Portfolio at the End of the Year
Type of Asset Dollar Amount Percentage
Stocks $             660,000 62.6%
Bonds                294,000 27.9%
Cash                100,000 9.5%
Total $         1,054,000 100.0%
3) Investment Portfolio After Rebalancing
Type of Asset Dollar Amount Percentage
Stocks $             632,400 60.0%
Bonds                316,200 30.0%
Cash                105,400 10.0%
Total $         1,054,000 100.0%

As you will note above, the investment portfolio starts out with the intended asset allocation for this individual investor. However, at the end of the year in accordance with the rate of return assumptions, the investment portfolio is quite different. In fact, the percentages for each asset class have changed. In the scenario detailed above, the investment portfolio at the end of the year is more risky than at the start of the year. That is where the rebalancing comes into play. In order to get the investment portfolio back to the original asset allocation, stocks need to be sold and the proceeds invested in bonds and cash. It is fairly easy to come up with the necessary purchases and sales by multiplying the total balance at the end of the year by the desired percentage for the investment portfolio for each asset class. That step will show how much should be bought or sold in order to restore the investment portfolio to harmony.

Please note that the $1 million and asset allocation types and percentages were selected for the purposes of illustrating the concept of rebalancing. The scenario listed above will work with any investment portfolio dollar amount. In addition, there is no reason why more specific asset classes cannot be added to the investment portfolio to match your individual investment portfolio (e.g. large cap stocks, international stocks, emerging market bonds, etc.). As long as you have the desired percentages for your portfolio, you can go through the same process in the example above in order to rebalance your portfolio.

In summary, rebalancing on a periodic basis is a way to ensure that the individual investor is on track to achieve his or her financial goals while not taking on too much or too little risk to get there. It is a way to stay on the path to one’s financial plan. Normally individual investors will rebalance their investment portfolios once a year, typically at the end of the calendar year. However, there is no reason why the length and/or time of the year cannot be altered. For the purposes of simplicity, a hard and fast rule of each year at the end of the year is usually the best rule of thumb when it comes to rebalancing for most novice individual investors. One of the other benefits is that rebalancing allows individual investors to not try and time the market or stay with a certain type of investment too long. As a personal anecdote, I have an uncle who got caught up in the Internet Bubble of the late 1990s into 2001. He devoted more and more of his retirement portfolio to technology stocks. When the bubble burst, his investment portfolio was devastated. Unfortunately, he had to delay his retirement by nearly ten years due to this mishap. Adherence to a strict schedule and rebalancing plan acts a buffer against occurrences like this. It really helps to take much of the emotion, which most investors of all types struggle with, out of investing.

Is There a Way to Discern Whether or Not a Prospective Financial Advisor Will Provide You with Top-Notch Service? Short Answer is Yes.

06 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by in asset allocation, bonds, business, Consumer Finance, Education, finance, financial advisor fees, financial planning, Individual Investing, investing, investment advice, investment advisory fees, investments, personal finance, portfolio, reasonable fees, reasonable fees for financial advisor, reasonable fees for investment advice, statistics, Suitability

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Most individual investors rely primarily on trust and the ability to develop a long-term relationship primarily to determine whether or not a prospective financial professional is the right choice.  Turning over the management of your investments to someone else is a major decision that has many implications.  Your current lifestyle in retirement or future lifestyle in retirement and meeting your other financial goals along the way are of paramount importance.  The assessment of your personal risk tolerance and understanding of how the financial markets work is inextricably linked.  With so many choices out there in terms of whose investment advice to value, it can be extremely challenging to decide who to pick or what firm offers the best investment, financial planning, and tax/legal advice.  With that being said, there is a critical step that I wanted to share with you that can limit the possibility that you might end up with a financial professional or firm that will not work as hard as you would like to ensure that your financial future is secure.

The answer to this question lies in the compensation to the financial professional as a result of taking on your business.  Now keep in mind that not all financial professionals will fall into this generalized group.  However, financial incentives and time constraints make this a significant factor in the servicing of your account.  The single most important question you can ask a prospective financial advisor, as it relates to this topic, is how much the average value of a client account is.  Why is this so important?  The reason it is so important is that any financial professional has a number of client accounts to service, and time is limited and constrained of course.  From the financial professional’s perspective, the ideal would be to acquire new clients that offer the most potential revenue.  Let’s go over some of the specifics of the financial services industry to illustrate the importance of this average account size bogey.

Most full-service financial services firms will categorize the client accounts of a financial professional in various tiers.  There are normally tier one, tier two, tier three, and other clients.  Tier one clients are those who offer the most revenue potential.  These clients tend to have the largest amount of assets.  Tier two clients are clients that have less assets than tier one but offer the promise of moving into tier one in the near future.  Tier three clients have below average assets in comparison to the other tiers and show no immediate promise for a lucrative revenue opportunity in the coming years.  There are then all other accounts that really should be transitioned to another financial services firm.  When the firm considers all the costs associated with maintaining that client account, it does not make economic sense.  It is far better for the financial professional to recommend that the client picks another financial services firm and professional most always does so via a referral.  Note that different firms have different terms to describe these classifications.  However, the general concept holds across the entire industry.

Here is the key component as it relates to individual investors specifically.  Tier one clients tend to be the top 20% clients in terms of account size for a financial professional.  Typically a certain relationship holds in these cases.  This tier of clients usually will yield roughly 80% of the overall revenue for financial professional.  Oddly enough, it follows very closely with the famed Pareto Principle.  The tier two clients fall below that top tier, but they show promise for the future.  Many times these individuals have investment accounts at other financial firms or will be coming into a good deal of new monies in the future.  They might be converted to tier one status.  These accounts tend to fall into the 21%-50% of clients managed by the financial professional.  The tier three clients are the bottom half of the accounts managed by that financial professional.  There also are “legacy” accounts that really offer little to no revenue and sometimes are unprofitable under certain circumstances.

Now you can look at the financial incentives from the financial professional’s prospective.  Let’s say that the financial professional earns a 1% fee on all assets under management (AUM) which is very common across the industry.  Therefore, if a client has $1,000,000, the annual fee is $10,000 ($1,000,000 * 1%).  A client with $250,000 at the same AUM fee will yield an annual fee of $2,500 ($250,000 * 1%).  Thus, it would take four of the latter clients to equal the revenue from the other single client.  Given that any financial professional has limited time to meet with clients, it makes perfect sense that he/she would prefer to have only one client since the compensation is the same.  The financial professional with the $1,000,000 client can service that account and look for another three clients to increase that revenue (i.e. similar time/effort expended overall).  The general key is to garner the most assets under management with the fewest amount of clients.  That allows the financial professional time manage his/her time most effectively and efficiently.

Here is the most important question you can ask any prospective financial professional:  What is the average account size of your clients?  If the average account size is higher than your investment portfolio, the chances are quite high that your account and relationship will receive much less attention than that financial professional’s larger account.  Now there can be extreme cases where a few large client accounts distort the average account size to the upside, but you can always ask the general range of client account size overall.  Two things will be at play in a situation where your investment account value is less than the average.  First, it makes more sense for the financial professional to spend more time with the tier one clients from a compensation perspective.  Other financial firms are constantly trying to “steal” these accounts to their firms by offering more services and additional financial product offerings.  Second, depending on the amount that your account size strays from the average, you will most likely receive customer service contact from a junior member on the team and/or a “cookie-cutter” investment portfolio recommendation.

I will expand a bit more on the last comments.  Most financial services firms use what is termed a “turn-key approach” for tier three clients.  There are set asset allocation models with a limited amount of components in the recommended portfolio.  The advice can be nearly identical to what you might find by simply going onto the websites of Vanguard, T Rowe Price, Fidelity, or Morningstar for free.  Now please do not infer that I am intimating that the asset allocation models of those websites are not valuable or match your particular risk tolerance and financial plan.  The point is why should you pay a financial professional to get a recommended asset allocation that is virtually identical to these offerings.  You would be better off not paying a fee whatsoever since you can replicate those portfolios for free and follow the ongoing changes to these model portfolios over time.  Note that the underlying investments in these model portfolios are quite transparent and regularly updated on the websites and in many cases come from regulatory filings to the SEC.

While it is true that some financial professionals provide the same level of service without regard to client account size, but these financial professionals predominantly tend to charge a flat-fee or hourly fee for investment advisory and financial planning services.  Financial professionals that are compensated with AUM fees or via commissions have a very tempting incentive to not only spend more time with larger client accounts to retain the client over time but concentrate on obtaining new clients with potential to be in the aforementioned tier one category.

To summarize at this point, the primary question to weed out the vast majority of potential financial professionals to manage your money is to ask “What is your average client account balance?”  If your account would be less than that average, there is a strong probability that the future attention to your account relationship will be less than the other client accounts.  If you have questions in the future, especially during volatile times in the global financial markets or major life changes, you may not be able to get a hold of your financial professional for guidance in a timeframe acceptable to you.  The other options you have are to find a financial professional where you are above the average or find a financial professional that charges a flat-fee or on an hourly basis.  At least in the latter option, you know that the financial profession spends more of an equal amount of time with each client.  Every client account tends to get the same amount of attention, and there is very little distinction in terms of importance.  Think of it this way, it is your hard-earned money and your future is on the line, you deserve to be one of the important clients of your financial professional.  Not just a name and account number.

What is the 800-Pound Gorilla in the Room for Retirees? It is 12.5.

26 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by in active investing, active versus passive debate, asset allocation, bonds, business, Education, Fiduciary, finance, financial advisor fees, financial planning, Individual Investing, investing, investing, investments, stocks, bonds, asset allocation, portfolio, investment advisory fees, investments, math, passive investing, personal finance, portfolio, risk, stocks, volatility

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The 12.5 I am referring to is 12.5%, and it relates to investment advisory fees.  I have discussed the effects of investment advisory fees at length in previous posts.  In general, most individual investors pay fees to financial services firms that are too high in comparison to the value provided in many cases.  For example, the vast majority of individual investors do not need complex, strategic tax planning, estate planning and legal advice, or sophistical financial planning.  However, the firms that most people invest with offer those services within the fee structure.  There is very little in the way of options to select a larger wealth management firm that will provide only asset allocation advice at a reduced fee because the individual investor does not need the other services when it comes to tax, legal, and sophisticated financial planning.  I wrote an article several months ago in regard to how you can look at the value added by your financial professional.  It is worth a review in terms of what he/she can do for you that you cannot simply do yourself using a passive investing strategy.  Here is the link:

https://latticeworkwealth.com/2013/10/26/are-your-financial-advisors-fees-reasonable-are-you-actually-adding-more-risk-to-your-ability-to-reach-your-long-term-financial-goals-here-is-a-unique-way-to-look-at-what-clients-pay-for/

I would like to focus on a different way of looking at investment advisory fees.  My primary focus will be on retirees; however, the logic directly applies to those in the wealth accumulation phase of life trying to save for retirement.  As I have mentioned previously, the standard fee for investment advisory services is normally 1% of assets under management (AUM).  This structure simply means that an individual investor pays $1 in fees for every $100 invested.  Another way to look at it is that you will pay $10,000 annually if your account balance is $1,000,000 ($1,000,000 * 1%).  I would like to go through an illustration to show what this means in terms of your investment performance, overall risk profile, and the ability to reach your long-term financial goals.

Most individual investors do not write out a check to their financial professional.  Rather, they have the investment advisory fees paid out of the investment returns in their portfolios.  My example does not make any difference how you pay your fees, but it can be somewhat hidden if you are not writing out a check.  The fees just appear as a line item on your daily activity section of your brokerage statement; most investors skim over it.  In order to make the mathematics easier to follow, I am going to use a retiree with a $1,000,000 account balance and a 1% AUM fee annually.  My entire argument applies no matter what your account balance is or your AUM fee.  You just need to insert your personal account balance and AUM fee which may be higher or lower.  So let’s get started.

In my hypothetical scenario of a $1,000,000 portfolio subject to a 1% AUM fee, this retiree will have to pay $10,000 to his/her financial professional for investment advisory services rendered.  Well, we can look at this fee from the standpoint of the portfolio as a whole in terms of investment performance necessary to pay that fee.  The portfolio will need to increase by at least 1% to pay the fee in full.  Now most financial professionals will tell clients that they can expect to earn 8% per year by investing in stocks.  So using that figure (which is close to the historical average), we can get to the fee by allocating $125,000 of the overall portfolio to stocks in order to increase the portfolio on average by 8% to be able to pay the $10,000 fee ($125,000 * 8% = $10,000).

What does that mean in terms of your overall portfolio allocation to stocks?  You can imagine that, whatever your total allocation to stocks is, 12.5% of that amount is invested simply to pay fees.  For example, if you are just starting out in retirement at age 65 and have 60% allocated to stocks, 12.5% of the expected return (8%) from stocks in your total  portfolio will go to pay your annual investment advisory fees and 47.5% of the expected return (8%) from stocks in your total portfolio will add to your account balance. 

The math works out this way:  $1,000,000 * 60% = $600,000 // $600,000 (invested in stocks) * 8% (expected return from stocks) = $48,000 // $48,000 – $10,000 (AUM fee at 1%) = $38,000.  An alternative way to do the math is to take the total allocation to stocks and subtract the necessary allocation to stocks to pay the AUM fee, and that result is the investment return for the year that remains in your account balance which is $38,000 (So take 60.0% – 12.5% = 47.5% // $1,000,000 * 47.5% * 8% = $38,000).

The paragraph above has major impacts for your portfolio.  Firstly, it illustrates how much additional risk you are taking on in your portfolio as a whole.  In order to breakeven net of fees, you need to invest 12.5% of your portfolio into stocks.  Retirees are in the wealth distribution phase of life, and most are living off the investment account earnings (capital gains, dividends, and interest) and principal.  Since retirees have no income from working and will not be making any additional contributions, they are impacted greater than other investors in the way of volatility.  Stocks are more volatile investments than bonds but offer the promise of higher returns.  It is the simple risk/reward tradeoff.  Second, it shows that the higher the fees for retirees the more vulnerable they are to volatility as a whole.  Since retirees need to withdraw money on a consistent/systematic basis, a higher allocation of their portfolio to riskier investments are more vulnerable than other investors that have longer timeframes prior to retirement (wealth accumulation phase). If there are major downturns in the stock market, retirees still have to withdraw from their accounts in order to pay living expenses.  They do not have the luxury of not selling.  Yes, a retiree could sell bonds instead of stocks but then the allocation of stocks has to rise by definition as a percentage of the entire portfolio.

There is a way to rethink the investment strategy for a retiree.  In today’s investing environment, there are many more investment offerings that offer financial products at much lower expenses than traditional active mutual fund managers.  These include ETFs and index mutual funds.  The expenses typically are less than 0.20% (in fact, most are significantly lower than this).  Additionally, there has been the proliferation of independent Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs) and Certified Financial Planners (CFPs) over the past 10-15 years who charge fee-only (hourly) or flat fee.  Most of these financial professionals charge significantly lower fees than the traditional 1% AUM fee.  In fact, it is possible to cut your fees by 50% at least.  Now the flipside may be that you might not have the ability to consult with some about certain sophisticated tax, legal/estate, and financial planning strategies.  However, most retirees do not need that advice to begin with.  The average retiree only needs a sound asset allocation of his/her investment portfolio given his/her risk tolerance and financial goals.  To learn more about independent RIAs and CFPs, I have included these links:

1)       RIA – http://www.riastandsforyou.com/benefits-of-an-ria.html

 

2)      CFP – http://www.plannersearch.org/why-cfp/Pages/Why-Hire-a-Certified-Financial-Planner.aspx

The main benefit in terms of reducing fees is not only that the retiree keeps more money, but, more importantly, he/she can reduce the overall risk of the portfolio.  Let’s go back to our hypothetical example of a retiree with a $1,000,000 who is charged a 1% AUM fee or $10,000 per year.  If the total investment advisory fees are reduced by 50%, the total annual fee is 0.5% or $5,000 per year.  What does this mean?  In our first example, the retiree had to allocate 12.5% of his/her portfolio of stocks to pay the $10,000 annual AUM fee (assuming an 8% expected return).  If the fees are 50% less, the retiree now only has to allocate 6.25% of the portfolio to stocks in order to pay the annual investment advisory fees ($1,000,000 * 6.25% = $62,500 // $62,500 * 8% = $5,000).

Now if we go back to the longer example of a simple 60% stock and 40% bond portfolio, the retiree in this case is able to invest 53.75% in stocks and 46.25% in bonds and still pay the annual investment advisory fees.  The math is as follows:  ($1,000,000 * 53.75% = $537,500 // $537,500 * 8% = $43,000 // $43,000 – $5,000 new annual fees = $38,000).  You will note that the retiree has $38,000 in his/her portfolio after the annual fees are paid out.  This dollar amount is equal to the other hypothetical retiree who had to pay a 1% AUM fee.  The example illustrates that both investors have the same expected increase to their portfolio but the retiree with the lower fees is able to get to that figure with a portfolio that is less risky because he/she is able to allocate 6.25% less to stocks.

Another way to look at this scenario is that the retiree in the second case with 50% lower fees could have alternatively chosen to reduce his/her stock allocation by 5%.  For example, the retiree could have started with a portfolio allocation of 55% instead of using the 53.75% stock allocation.  In this example, the retiree would have an expected return after fees that is $1,000 higher than the retiree from the first example and take less risk.  The math is as follows:  ($1,000,000 * 55% = $550,000 // $550,000 * 8% = $44,000 // $44,000 – $5,000 = $39,000 // $39,000 – $38,000 = $1,000).  The retiree in this example would have a higher expected return from his/her entire portfolio of 0.1%.  While this figure might not sound like much, the more important point is that this return is achieved with less risk (only 55% allocation to stocks versus a 60% allocation to stocks).

A financial professional might argue that he/she is able to create an asset allocation model for an average retiree that will end up having investment returns higher than that recommended by the independent RIA or CFP.  Of course, this might be the case.  However, in order to have the retiree be indifferent between the two scenarios, the portfolio recommended by the financial professional charging a 1% AUM fee must be able to return 0.5% more annually at an absolute minimum.  Now this does not even consider the riskiness of the retiree’s portfolio.  In order to have a portfolio earn an additional 0.5% per year, the client will have to accept investing in riskier asset classes.  Therefore, given the additional risk, the retiree should require even more than an additional 0.5% overall return to compensate him/her for the potential for higher volatility.

As you can see, the level of fees makes a big difference.  The more you are able to cut the fees on your retirement account (and any account for that matter) the less risky your portfolio can be positioned.  In the aforementioned example, the overall reduction in the exposure to stocks can be a maximum of 12.5% to stocks.  Now the average retiree will most likely not want to forgo any investment advice from a financial professional.  However, in the case of person able to lower his/her investment fees by 50%, he/she was able to reduce his/her investments in stocks by 6.25% (12.5% * 50%).  In fact, you can figure out the possible reduction in exposure to stocks by multiplying the 12.5% by the reduction in fees you are able to achieve.  For example, let’s say that you are able to reduce your investment fees by 70%.  You would be able to reduce your allocation to stocks by 8.7% (12.5% * 70%).

The entire point of this article is to show you how you can be able to reduce the volatility in your portfolio and not sacrifice overall investment returns.  If investing in stocks during your retirement years makes you nervous, this methodology can be used to help you sleep better at night because you have less total money of your entire retirement savings allocated to stocks.  However, you are not sacrificing investment returns.  Always remember that in the world of investment advisory fees, it truly is a “zero sum game”.  All this means is that the investment advisory fees are reducing your net investment portfolio gains.  The gain in the value of your portfolio either goes to you or your financial professional.  The more you learn about how investment advisory fees, the types of financial professionals available to advise you offering different fee schedules, and how the financial markets work, the more gains you will keep in your portfolio.

Not all Index Mutual Funds and ETFs are Created Equal: Part 2 of 2

12 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by in active investing, active versus passive debate, asset allocation, bonds, business, Consumer Finance, Education, enhanced indexing, finance, financial planning, Individual Investing, investing, investments, passive investing, personal finance, portfolio, risk, stocks, volatility

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The exponential growth of passive investment vehicles over the past ten years has been astonishing since the infancy of index investing that Vanguard made so famous back in the early 1980s.  In the first part of this discussion, I spoke at length about the need to really read the prospectus or fact sheet of an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) or an index mutual fund.  Two similarly sounding investments may actually have quite different underlying components.  I utilized two different emerging market stock ETFs to demonstrate the difference, and they were the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Stock ETF (Ticker Symbol:  EEM) and the Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets Stock ETF (Ticker Symbol:  VWO), respectively to show why this is true.  The main issue in this case was that one considers South Korea to be a developing economy (EEM), and the other (VWO) does not.  Therefore, a large component of your investment allocation in your portfolio to emerging market stocks may be more heavily weighted toward South Korea than you at first thought (over 15% in fact).  For the details of the discussion, you can click on this link:

https://latticeworkwealth.com/2014/01/28/not-all-index-mutual-funds-and-etfs-are-created-equal-part-1-of-2/

The second issue that I hinted at in part 1 relates to the definition of passive investing.  The active management versus passive investing debate has been raging on for over 30 years with proponents on both sides of the fence.  In its most general form, passive investing is choosing to invest in all stocks or bonds tied to a particular index, such as the S&P 500 Index, Russell 2000 Index, MSCI EAFE Index, or the Barclays Aggregate Bond Index.  The investor in this case decides that he/she would rather participate in the investment performance of all the components of the index rather than picking the best stocks or bonds themselves.  Active managers strive to beat the investment performance of a particular index by scouring the quantitative and qualitative data about each particular stock or bond.  These professionals believe that they have the ability to make superior investment choices and do better than average (i.e.  just settling for the investment returns of the index less the expenses of the ETF or index mutual fund).  I spoke at length about active and passive investing in one of my earliest blog posts.  Here is the link to that more involved discussion to get further detail:

https://latticeworkwealth.com/2013/07/05/difference-between-active-and-passive-investing/

A new type of investment vehicle has sprung up during the development of the ETF industry, and it is referred to as “enhanced indexing”.  The idea is that you can approach the debate by using a hybrid view of sorts.  Enhanced indexing is investing in a particular index but not investing in all the stocks or bonds or choosing to weight the stocks or bonds differently than the index does.  These ETFs offer the ability to use the asset manager’s proprietary strategy to pick the “best” members in the index.  There are many managers that do this, and two of the most popular are offered by the WisdomTree company and Dimensional Fund Advisors.  The ETF and mutual funds offered by these companies follow a similar philosophy with different approaches.  However, each company strives to outperform the index that their portfolio managers select.

There is nothing wrong with any of the offering of these companies.  In fact, many of their investment vehicles have had superb performance over the years.  This salient point is that they are really “blurring” the line between active and passive investment philosophies.  Using a more strict definition of passive investing, the investor knows at the outset that they will underperform the index by the amount of fees (and “tracking error” – a concept I will not go into specifically in this post) assessed to the ETF or index mutual fund.  However, they will not significantly underperform because all the components of the index are always held.  An active investment vehicle has the ability to outperform or underperform an index after fees are assessed each year.  Investors in enhanced indexed ETFs or mutual funds fall into the latter category.  Once the asset manager makes a decision to pick the “best” components of a particular index, they are moving into the realm of active management.  One of the appeals of this investing strategy to individual investors is that you can still beat the index.  With that being said though, you are taking the chance that the investment will underperform what the passive ETF or index mutual fund delivers in terms of investment returns.

Enhanced indexing may seem like a great way to “have your cake and eat it too”, but, at its core, active management (either by way of a proprietary computer algorithm, back tested studies, qualitative metrics, or some other method) nonetheless.  Many individual investors fail to recognize that they are really choosing an active strategy, although some professionals would argue that it is more sophisticated than the approach of traditional active managers.  As long as you are aware of this fact at the beginning, there is nothing wrong with that.  In fact, many investment advisors use a combination of active and passive investment vehicles when building a portfolio for their clients.  For example, it has been shown that there may still be inefficiencies in micro cap (normally stocks with a market capitalization below $1 billion) stocks because very few Wall Street analysts follow the companies and provide investment recommendations.  On the other hand, there are a plethora of Wall Street analysts who follow the largest companies in the US, so it becomes much harder to know more than other investors.  Thus, some financial professionals will advise a certain portfolio allocation to passive ETFs and another piece of the portfolio will go to active managers.  This type of approach is a hybrid approach.

In the case of enhanced indexing (or “smart beta” funds – similar type of concept that I will not elaborate more on in this discussion), the individual investor is allowing the asset manager to make active selections which is much more akin to active investing.  The key is to know that you run the risk of two things.  First, the particular investment vehicle may do worse than the corollary strictly passive ETF or index mutual fund in terms of investment returns.  Second, the asset manager may not always be fully invested in the index at all times as well.  Therefore, you may have a higher allocation to cash than you initially wanted.  Now if the asset manager sells stocks to raise cash before a downturn in stock prices, the individual investor will not lose as much as other market participants.  The flipside is that the individual investor fails to participate fully in any stock market rally.  This second part is emphasizing that the asset manager may lag the investment performance of the benchmark index even more so than the passive ETF or index mutual fund.

The important thing is to simply know up front that passive investing involves average underperformance at the outset.  However, you are assured of at least capturing the lion’s share of the investment returns.  Any other investment vehicle may do better or worse over the long term which is the main concern of an individual investor.  If the enhanced indexing investment strategy yields lower long-term investment returns for your portfolio, you have paid money to “lose” money on a relative basis.  What I mean by this is that, as an individual investor, you could have just invested in the entire index of stocks or bonds at a very low cost by doing absolutely nothing.  If the enhanced index manager outperforms the index after fees are taken into account, that investment decision was a wise one.  However, history has shown that active managers tend to lag their proper benchmark over the long term (usually defined as 5 years or more).

It may be enticing to try to combine the best features of the passive investing and active investing philosophies.  With that being said, individual investors need to realize that any departure from the strict definition of passive investing increases the odds that the manager will have an investment return different than the index.  If your investing time horizon is 5, 10, 15, 20 years or more, the active mangers (either in its pure form or via enhanced indexing) has a more difficult time outperforming the index year in and year out to provide the individual investor with performance above and beyond what the “stodgy”, old passive ETFs or index mutual funds offer.  I would characterize this more as “buyer beware”.  The main takeaway is not that these are “bad” investments at all; rather, it is a conscious choice to depart from the passive world of investing and move to the active side.