March 9, 2015: Newsletter Collection Update

Mar 10, 2015 | 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, April 13, 2015. You can also find the re-balance calendar for 2014 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

It’s been nine months since we updated our  newsletter collections last time. In this newsletter, we again want to update the collections. We believe the newsletters present our philosophy, methodology and various thoughts in retirement investments. Please remember you can always find this link on our articles page (pull down menu from Newsletters tab). 

In general, we don’t include those that are time sensitive materials on markets in the collections. However, they are still of interests to readers to review: 

Market reviews

We again would like to draw readers attention on a previous 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. 

This is still very pertinent to the current market condition: we are seeing an overvalued stock market and an elevated bond market. There is certainly a possibility (however how slim it is) that markets will experience the 1987 style crash. Thus, it is still important to make sure the risk level of your overall investment portfolio is within your comfort zone. 

Newsletter Collection

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 Return Bond Funds & Conservative Allocation

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

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 Review

We again review the two ‘good’ 401k plan portfolios: 

Portfolio Performance Comparison (as 0f 3/9/2015):

Ticker/Portfolio Name YTD
Return**		 1Yr AR 3Yr AR 5Yr AR 10Yr AR 10Yr Sharpe
Morningstar Inc 401K Plan Strategic Asset Allocation – Optimal Moderate 1.1% -0.0% 7.3% 7.8% 6.6% 0.53
Morningstar Inc 401K Plan Tactical Asset Allocation Moderate 1.8% 3.2% 8.7% 7.5% 10.0% 1.06
Berkshire Hathaway Employee Savings and Stock Ownership Plan of General RE Strategic Asset Allocation – Optimal Moderate 0.9% 4.7% 6.3% 7.0% 6.0% 0.41
Berkshire Hathaway Employee Savings and Stock Ownership Plan of General RE Tactical Asset Allocation Moderate 1.3% 2.6% 5.9% 7.7% 11.0% 1.18
VFINX (Vanguard 500 Index Investor) 1.0% 12.4% 17.8% 14.9% 7.5% 0.32
VBINX (Vanguard Balanced Index Inv) 0.8% 8.4% 11.5% 10.8% 7.0% 0.5

*: NOT annualized

**YTD: Year to Date

See year by year detailed comparison >>

Again, these two expert supported plans have under performed US stocks/US bonds balanaced fund (VBINX) for the past 1, 3 and 5 years. But these global balanced tactical portfolios still did much better in the last 10 years. What is more, the tide can change any time such that other international assets become in favor. 

Market Overview

Rate sensitive assets including long term bonds and REITs incurred large loss last week. Investors are now expecting job market improvement will eventually translate into a mid year or even early Fed rate raise. However, as all other macro data are weakening, it is still hard to see how the trends will turn. 

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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