I am working on restructuring my portfolio to better achieve my goals. Essentially we want no losing years and an average return of 12% (my wife’s order). This blog will be the first installment of my outline and thoughts as to how I expect to get there.
To start with I want a safe distribution. I don’t want a loss year and I don’t want steep drawdowns. Most financial advisors would tell me I am dreaming and that I would be better off leaving everything in money market and bond funds if I cannot accept a losing year. But I am looking at a recent book "The Ivy Portfolio" by Faber and Richardson to give me a roadmap. It is a great book. It talks about how to invest like the top endowments - the Yale and Harvard endowments and avoid bear markets. From 1985 to 2008 the Harvard endowment fund had only 2 losing years of -2.7% and -0.5% which were in 2001 and 2002 and still turned out an average annualized return of 15.2%!! The Yale endowment was even better. One losing year of -0.2% in 1988 and average return of 16.6% from 1985 to 2008. Wow! What an incredible performance from both fund managers. Now the million dollar question; can I duplicate the endowment performance while keeping risk down?
According to the two authors, you can get close but not quite as good. The difference will be the ability of the endowments to put money into private equity that we cannot. Still, the authors give you various portfolio options that get close, and that is what I am looking at. Ideally we want to get 12% returns but have minimum drawdowns and no losing year. But as I go for more rewards, I would increase my risk and would have greater losses and drawdowns, although the two endowments sure don’t show that.
My thinking is to have a distribution of 50:50 Stocks and stock funds:Alternatives to stocks in my portfolio. Then apply tactical asset management to the individual components. Tactical asset management sounds a lot better than market timing but that is what it is…I will apply my upgrade method to my 401K funds as I have mentioned in previous posts. That means I will have a bias towards bond funds and cash in a bear market.
Stuart, Great points. I don't worry about taxation because these are 401K and R/IRA funds that are tax deferred. Taxation occurs only on withdrawal. Where are you located?
ReplyDeleteI feel like you about the mighty bus except I keep a generous life insurance policy on me for my wife to cover my departure. I pray I live one more day than she does and long enough to enjoy seeing the kids do their thing.
Will post more during the weekend,.