Assets
Occam’s – How Buffer Assets Might Be Able to Help Your Retirement
WHAT IS OCCAM’S RAZOR? Occam’s Razor is a principle attributed to William Occam, a 14th century philosopher. He stressed that explanations must not be multiplied beyond what is necessary. Thus, Occam’s Razor is a term used to “shave off” or dismiss superfluous explanations for a given event. This concept is largely ignored within the investment management landscape. This newsletter…
Read MoreReverse Engineering To Desired Retirement Time Horizons
This article is part of a series; click here to read Part 1. Using the portfolio return and volatility assumptions determined in Exhibit 1.1, we then reverse engineer fixed return assumptions and sustainable spending levels for a desired retirement time horizon and targeted probability of success. The investment portfolio is modeled using 100,000 Monte Carlo…
Read MoreDetermining Sustainable Spending from an Investment Portfolio in Retirement
Determining the sustainable spending rate from a diversified investment portfolio in retirement requires making decisions about longevity and market returns. The final section in this chapter provides an opportunity to integrate this discussion in order to obtain a better sense about sustainable distributions from an investment portfolio in retirement. Rather than blindly applying something like…
Read MoreWhat Does the GameStop Kerfuffle Mean?
It’s been a pretty wild ride with GameStop. But while there has been a lot happening, does it actually mean much? We’ve examined the details of what happened elsewhere, so I’m going to focus on some of the bigger questions that this whole affair raises, and specifically how this all impacts long-term investors. So let’s…
Read MoreWhat Happened With GameStop?
It’s a bit of an understatement to say that GameStop has been in the news lately. There are a lot of people opining about what is going on, but we want to cut through that and look at what actually happened (we look at what it all means in another article). So what actually happened, and…
Read MoreIs the Value Premium Pining for the Fjords?
There’s no magic formula for investing. The financial markets seem to take some sort of cosmic joy in bringing people back down to Earth. And it’s value investing’s turn – in fact, it’s been value investing’s turn for a while now. To put it mildly, this has been a rough decade and a half for value stocks.
Read MoreWhat Do Low Interest Rates Mean for Stock Returns?
Interest rates are one of the key tools that the Federal Reserve has to manage the economy. Changing how much it costs to borrow money can slow down an economy or give a the economy a nudge.
Read MoreIs Buying an Annuity in a Zero Interest Rate Environment a Good Idea?
The Federal Reserve’s decision to cut its benchmark federal funds rate from 1% to a range of 0% raises significant questions for those reassessing their retirement nest egg—a common occurrence following a dramatic selloff in equities according to research conducted by Indiana University’s Alessandro Previtero —and the value of annuities in providing guaranteed lifetime income.
Read MoreIs Buying an Annuity in a Bear Market a Good Idea?
As the stock market experienced unprecedented growth over the past eleven years, many people were naturally less interested in the lifetime income options from pensions or annuities. Who wouldn’t rather have all the assets today so they can invest them with the idea of earning high returns?
Read MoreAdjustments For A Conservative Return Assumption
Consider three scenarios: An individual investing a lump-sum amount for thirty years An individual saving a fixed percentage of a constant inflation-adjusted salary at the end of each year over a thirty-year accumulation period An individual withdrawing the maximum sustainable constant inflation-adjusted amount from a portfolio at the start of each year over a thirty-year…
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