Quest For The Best Investment Strategy

It’s our human nature to constantly look for a better solution. In investing, it’s thus very understandable that investors are pondering and switching to new ways of investing. Since we started MyPlanIQ service in 2009, we have observed a striking behavior: when one of our strategies such as Strategic Asset Allocation (SAA) and Tactical Asset Allocation(TAA) lagged behind and the other one was doing well, many investors inquired and changed to the other strategy. When both strategies lagged behind US market index such as S&P 500, some of them bailed and looked for a greener pasture. 

At the start of the service in 2009-2010, investors, fresh out of one of the biggest financial crises in history, were looking for something that can manage risk, our TAA thus attracted many users. However, as time went, SAA started to out perform, investors switched. In the last two years, US stock market index has been the sole winner, some just simply gave up and went for individual US stock or sector investing. 

By doing so, investors essentially abandoned the very first principle in portfolio management: diversification. By solely investing in US stocks, not only investors gave up global diversification, but also abandoned risk management. At some point last year, because of the historical low bond yield, even financial media started to tout a bond replacement: dividend yield stocks. For them, history was quickly forgotten, dividend stocks were safer than bonds, US stocks would just keep rising.