June 23, 2014: Newsletter Collection Update

Jun 24, 2014 | Asset-Allocation, Bonds, Economy, Feature, Gold, Headline, Income, Investments, IRA, Markets, Mutual-Funds, Newsletter, Retirement

Re-balance Cycle Reminder All MyPlanIQ’s newsletters are archived here.

For regular SAA and TAA portfolios, the next re-balance will be on Monday, July 7, 2014. You can also find the re-balance calendar for 2013 on ‘Dashboard‘ page once you log in.

As a reminder to expert users: advanced portfolios are still re-balanced based on their original re-balance schedules and they are not the same as those used in Strategic and Tactical Asset Allocation (SAA and TAA) portfolios of a plan.

Please note that we now list the next re-balance date on every portfolio page.

Newsletter Collection Update

As we strive to provide useful and comprehensive information to our readers, we have received several requests for a periodic review/categorizing our newsletters. It looks like it is a good time to add/change our newsletter collections. Please remember you can always find this link on our articles page (pull down menu from Newsletters tab). 

We do not list newsletters that are merely timely market commentaries in the collection. But they are useful by themselves: 

Recent Market Reviews

A brief summary on market valuations: stock markets have become even more over valued by historical standard since the publishing of those newsletters. Our opinion is to maintain a small core strategic portfolio and a larger tactical portfolio (or portfolios) to better protect capital in such an environment. Contrary to the current calm markets, we nevertheless are becoming more cautious. We also would like to remind our readers of the newsletter October 28, 2013: What Can We Learn From The 1987 Stock Market Crash?. In the newsletter, we stated that: 

Trend following (or momentum) tactical asset allocation strategy can not avoid the crash

From the chart above, one can see that leading to the October 1987, all of the major risk asset classes (US stocks, international stocks and US REITs) were clearly in an uptrend. The decline started gradually and then from October 14, it had a series of non-stop declines, leading to the largest decline on October 19. On the other hand, the long term bond didn’t give any warning: its price kept declining until October 19, a perfect synchronized (or correlated) act between stocks and bonds. 

We recommend our readers to read the newsletter to understand the possible weakness of the strategies we are using in such a scenario. 

Newsletter Collection

We highlight the newly added newsletters in the collection. We have provided a sentence or two for them: 

Portfolio Management

Asset Allocation and Other Investment Strategies

Strategic: 

Tactical

Strategic and Timing

Fund Selection

Core Satellite and Multiple Strategies

Momentum Strategies and their behavior. How various asset allocation strategies work in different market cycles

Strategy and Portfolio Evaluation
Risk Parity, Four Pillar and Permanent Portfolios

More newsletters can be found in these two articles:

Portfolio Rebalance & Daily Management
Risk Management & Investor Behavior

Portfolio risk management techniques and issues. 

Investment Philosophy
Fixed Income, Dividend, Total Returns & Conservative Allocation

The following newsletters address many concerns for retiree, conservative and income investors. 

Fund Review

Financial Planning & Retirement

Features & System Q&As

These newsletters address new features and how to for our system usage. 

Existing Portfolio Performance Reviews

In general, we review various portfolio performance in each newsletter. However, you can get latest up to date  performance result and comparison by clicking on links below portfolio comparison tables listed in our quarterly or annual review newsletters: 

Portfolios suggested by advisors and brokerages

Portfolio Overview

We reported the 401k plans of two interesting investment companies: Morningstar and Berkshire Hathaway’s General RE. Here are the two companies’ model portfolios: 

Portfolio Performance Comparison

Ticker/Portfolio Name YTD
Return**		 1Yr AR 3Yr AR 5Yr AR 5Yr Sharpe 10Yr AR 10Yr Sharpe
Morningstar Inc 401K Plan Strategic Asset Allocation – Optimal Moderate 5.9% 17.9% 9.0% 12.9% 1.37 8.6% 0.71
Morningstar Inc 401K Plan Tactical Asset Allocation Moderate 6.0% 18.0% 7.7% 12.1% 1.37 11.6% 1.24
Berkshire Hathaway Employee Savings and Stock Ownership Plan of General RE Strategic Asset Allocation – Optimal Moderate 6.2% 15.0% 7.4% 11.2% 1.06 7.7% 0.54
Berkshire Hathaway Employee Savings and Stock Ownership Plan of General RE Tactical Asset Allocation Moderate 4.1% 14.9% 8.6% 12.2% 1.34 12.9% 1.39
VFINX (Vanguard 500 Index Investor) 6.7% 25.4% 17.8% 18.6% 1.11 7.7% 0.32
VBINX (Vanguard Balanced Index Inv) 5.0% 16.3% 11.9% 13.5% 1.37 7.3% 0.52

*: NOT annualized

**YTD: Year to Date

See year by year detailed comparison >>

One can see that both plans’ portfolios have continued to perform well. Indeed one can learn something useful from these investment powerhouses. 

Market Overview

Cash continues to be at the very bottom of the trend ranking table. In the meantime, gold finally came back a bit. Geopolitical and economic events continue to be calm on the surface, but under currents are developing.  We continue to caution the new and existing investors to take such markets seriously instead of being complacent. 

For more detailed asset trend scores, please refer to 360° Market Overview.

We would like to remind our readers that markets are more precarious now than other times in the last 5 years. It is a good time and imperative to adjust to a risk level you are comfortable with right now.  However, recognizing our deficiency to predict the markets, we will stay on course. 

We again copy our position statements (from previous newsletters): 

Our position has not changed: We still maintain our cautious attitude to the recent stock market strength. Again, we have not seen any meaningful or substantial structural change in the U.S., European and emerging market economies. However, we will let markets sort this out and will try to take advantage over its irrational behavior if it is possible. 

We again would like to stress for any new investor and new money, the best way to step into this kind of markets is through dollar cost average (DCA), i.e. invest and/or follow a model portfolio in several phases (such as 2 or 3 months) instead of the whole sum at one shot. 

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Disclaimer:
Any investment in securities including mutual funds, ETFs, closed end funds, stocks and any other securities could lose money over any period of time. All investments involve risk. Losses may exceed the principal invested. Past performance is not an indicator of future performance. There is no guarantee for future results in your investment and any other actions based on the information provided on the website including, but not limited to, strategies, portfolios, articles, performance data and results of any tools. All rights are reserved and enforced. By accessing the website, you agree not to copy and redistribute the information provided herein without the explicit consent from MyPlanIQ.

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