77. How optimistic would you be if Warren Buffet manages your retirement portfolio?

As of May 12 of this year, the US market as measured by the Standard & Poors Index is down by more than 18%! Retirees invested in the US market will see their retirement fund shrunk by almost the same amount! This is a serious number! Provisions intended for 10 years will now be sufficient for only 8.2 years.

Berkshire Hathaway on the other hand is UP by 3.8%! a similar 10 year retirement fund would have grown by about 5 months!

Over the last 10 years, Berkshire Hathaway grew by 336.4% over the S&P 500 195.6%!

How great would it be if we have the great Warren Buffet as our fund manager!

Some may have access and resources to invest in Berkshire, but for those without, is there any way to generate returns in a volatile market?

Success in investments is all about "choosing" the right mix of assets to be included in your retirement portfolio, as each asset class will have its own specific risk to reward characteristics, to optimize returns and to minimize risk as much as possible, the key is to decide how much percentage of each asset class should you allocate your funds to

Two guidelines?

Time horizon - the years to your retirement

the earlier you start will give you the advantage of having the ability to be more aggressive, as risk is almost always relative to return, placing a larger portion of your funds in equities may translate to two benefits, first is that the amount of money needed to achieve a target retirement fund level may be smaller (hence cheaper), as the higher projected returns may translate to a higher growth rate

the second benefit is that allocating the same amount of money may grow to a much sizeable retirement fund

Accept "volatility" as a fact in generating returns

The market will not be moving up or down in a straight line but in a series of oscillations, a proper asset allocation strategy from the onset of the investment will provide the flexibility to take advantage of these swings

a 60/40 (equity/bond) portfolio for example will have a different asset percentage distribution after a period of time, in a case where the stock market goes up, it may become 65/35 because of stock market appreciation, the idea here is to bring it back to 60/40 by moving the excess funds from equities to bonds, this is the so called re-balancing

regular re-balancing serves two purpose: first it that it sets a limit to the amount of risk to the portfolio, a 60% allocation to equities limits market risk exposure to 60% of your retirement fund, second is that it provides an automatic mechanism for profit taking, this can serve as buffer when the need to average down arises as the market moves down

we may not have the privilege of having Mr. Buffet manage our retirement fund, a structured disciplined approach (asset allocation + regular re-balancing) may be the second best approach to achieve our retirement goals

all the best my friends!

76. When the U.S. sneezes, the world catches a cold

My financial education was brought up in an environment when the US markets rule the world.

In the mid-90s when I was with a fund management company, we make it a point to check the results of US trading every morning before we go out and meet our distributors, this provides a starting point for market updates we give throughout the day, and if the market is extra volatile (up or down at least 2%), we would shift through the news to try to find clues for its next move, these information somehow gives our sales partners a certain sense of comfort in believing that the market is somewhat rational and any moves can be explained away in a logical manner.

The financial services industry is sometimes categorized into the “Sell side” and the “Buy side”, Sell side are companies involved in creating products and services that aims to generate returns on the market, the buy side companies are the pension funds and investors in general who buys these products to include in their investment portfolio

Financial advisors in general, as they are offering products and services can be grouped with the Sell side, while the insurance companies they represent are generally grouped with the Buy side as they continuously source out financial products to be used as building blocks to the Life Insurance products they create

This insight is useful in understanding how the markets may influence the context in which information is gathered and disseminated

The Sell side obviously would focus on the more positive aspects of the markets to make their product offerings more saleable while the Buy side may be more critical in their study of the market as a faulty view may affect the viability of the products they create and place the reputation of the company at risk

The Sell side’s context in the market updates they provide can be summed up as “what can go right given the circumstances” while the Buy side focuses on “what can go wrong”

As we create our own market narrative it would be helpful to seek inputs from both sides, combining insights from “what can go right” and “what can go wrong”

My own experience tells me that divining the next market move is quite difficult, no matter what the forecasts is (either up or down), the odds of being correct six months from now would be 50/50 at best

This builds the case of having a proper asset allocation strategy before committing any funds to the market, spread out your investible funds in assets that are generally uncorrelated, this would provide the flexibility to adjust your market exposure which may help in generating consistent positive returns over the long term.

All the best my friends

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