Oct 12, 2017

Weekend Links - 10/12/17

QUOTES OF THE WEEK

"I really wish my dad had spent more time at work instead of with me when I was a kid." <-- Said no one, ever. Vhalros onRedditt

But yeah, if you aren't a raging failure of a human being and actually enrich your children's lives, then [early retirement] is definitely the best thing you can do with your time. Csp256 on Redditt


[comment - I retired early to care for my kids so this is a wee bit of self-serving self-affirmation.] 


GRAPHIC OF THE WEEK 


The Shape of Ruin Risk
60 year old with moderate assumptions for net real returns
- RiversHedge

RETIREMENT FINANCE AND PLANNING

If you want to see a group of financial experts brawl, ask them how much it's safe to withdraw from your investment portfolio each year in retirement. One of the most common answers is to suggest some variation of the 4 per cent rule. Under this guideline, a retiree would take out 4 per cent of his or her original portfolio in the first year and continue to withdraw the same amount – but adjusted for inflation – each subsequent year. The 4 per cent rule offers the undeniable attraction of simplicity. But the more you examine it, the more unsatisfactory it becomes.  

Managed-Payout Funds: One-Stop Shopping for Retirement Income? Darrow Kirkpatrick. When all is said and done these managed-payout funds are really just another framework for paying a financial advisor to manage your investments and dole out monthly income to you in retirement. They provide more structure and policy for that arrangement than some mechanisms, such as hiring an independent advisor, but less than others, such as buying an annuity. Provided the expense ratio is reasonably low, there is nothing inherently wrong with the managed-payout approach. But because of the variables and future unknowns, deciding which among the managed-payout options is optimal, or how they compare to other retirement income solutions is difficult indeed. 

Tactical, But When? Corey Hoffstein, NewFound
"we believe that investors should most actively seek to manage risk when they are most susceptible to sequence-of-return risk.  In this commentary, we seek to identify exactly when that is."
[COMMENT: I put this link under "retirement finance and planning" rather than "markets and investing" because I find it gratifying that the new breed of ETF strategists are not just flogging cool ETF combinations, returns and fees, they are actually thinking way beyond a "normal" one-period institutional-investing asset allocation point of view and are actually thinking about short to medium horizons and the multi-period effects of a spending constraint on outcomes.  This is what I call retirement finance at its best.  This post in particular I think is a useful extension to the concept of return sequence risk.  While this pushes the boundary a bit in terms of thinking about the positive impact on typical retirees who engage in well-thought-through tactical approaches I would love to see this type of analysis in the future feather in a much closer look at: a) younger retirees, say 50 or so, and b) single premium immediate or deferred annuities as an alternative to a fixed income positions or tactical allocation.  The latter, in particular, I'm guessing (based on other work I've seen from Pfau and Tomlinson) would have similar (if not maybe superior?) benefits to outcomes (risk pooling is one of those few financial instrument that cannot be replicated by a retail investor): sequence risk is abated, ruin risk declines, and assertive allocations to equity become almost a no-brainer.] 



MARKETS AND INVESTING

A small minority of investors, mostly value investors — a group to which I belong — take a different view. We think it is the probability of permanent capital loss, not volatility, that constitutes the real risk. Neither perspective is entirely correct. 

By defining risk as volatility, the random walk theorists create a paradox. When price fluctuations are less than ± one standard deviation from the mean, the bell curve has some resemblance to the real world. In the central region of the bell curve, however, volatility is not risk but a risk stabilizer. At the tail ends of the bell curve, where real risks reside, volatility is a meaningless metric because Gaussian statistics no longer work. 

…because asset prices exhibit radical randomness, predicting future returns is futile. Investors should focus on managing risk. To manage investment risk properly, however, we must first identify what risk truly is. Unfortunately, the academics view risk as volatility through a distorted random walk lens.  

Correlations v horizon, rcmalternatives
[Embedded quote:] "This example highlights an omnipresent by rarely discussed challenge with financial time-series. Specifically, that the measured relationship between variables will almost always change dramatically across time. This effect is not isolated to observations over two distinct periods of time; rather, we observe similar dynamics at play when time series are observed at different frequencies. In fact, variables can appear to be negatively correlated at one frequency – say daily – and yet be positively correlated at another frequency – say monthly!")
So, correlations matter, but like everything in life, context should come to play. It’s mathematically possible that things not correlated over long periods are highly correlated over shorter periods (see our recent post), and likewise possible for negatively correlated time series over short time periods to be highly correlated over longer ones. 

We construct portfolios to minimize risk of annual volatility. There is little thought given to how and when the money is actually spent. If the purpose of our savings is to pay for a spending goal such as a college education or an income in retirement, shouldn’t we focus on how well the strategy helps us meet our goal? This is the essence of goal-based investing. … One of the most important benefits of goal-based planning is simply forcing us to think about what matters most in our lives.   

Investors usually understand returns. But risk… risk is more difficult. Risk involves communicating not just that many outcomes are possible, but how likely they are. 

sing Pfau’s results, I will prove that the evidence actually shows that investors do not underperform their investments. I will first explain DALBAR’s error and then show, using two examples, how serious the error is. Second, I will describe the conventional wisdom that DALBAR’s error created, and how deeply entrenched it is. Third, I will explain why this received wisdom should have been the subject of skepticism in the first place. Fourth, I will show why Morningstar’s apparent confirmation of the conventional wisdom is mistaken. Finally, I will discuss another interpretation of poor investment decision making, and what it may mean. 




ALTERNATIVE RISK

The Allure of the Family Office, Institutional Investor 

Factor Olympics: Q3 2017, factorresearch
2017 is on track for a good year for factor exposure as most factors are positive. Quality, Growth, and Momentum are headed for the winners podium. Value is negative across regions, giving up all of last year’s gains.  

Tail-risk hedging (TRH) strategies profit from significant market corrections. They may be used alongside or to replace traditional risk management strategies (e.g., diversification via asset allocation) where the core portfolios have a significant allocation to equities or other volatile assets. They may also be used on a standalone basis to profit from market corrections.  [COMMENT: I generally make money on the other side of this…] 

the outperformance gap between large endowments and U.S. public pensions has shrunk since 2008, as pensions have increased allocations to alternative assets hoping to copy the investment success of endowments… In the spirit of the more aggressive nature of the Endowment Model, a well-designed, index fund based strategy could possibly also earn superior, long-term risk-adjusted returns versus a balanced benchmark. By excluding alternative assets and focusing on beta to streamline the Endowment Model, it could avoid many of the drawbacks of the Endowment Model by improving liquidity and transparency, reducing fees and complexity, and eliminating lock-up provisions and investment gates.  


Lindzon on Momentum , Howard Lindzon 


Chart of a momentum ETF...






A bull market prevails across all the major US factor strategies led by momentum, based on one-year returns via a set of proxy ETFs 
  
One former insider at an exchange who reviewed this article summarized it as the following:   The cryptocurrency world is basically rediscovering a vast framework of securities and consumer protection laws that already exist; and now they know why they exist. The cryptocurrency community has created an environment where there are a lot of small users suffering diffuse negative outcomes (e.g., thefts, market losses, the eventual loss on ICO projects). And the enormous gains are extremely concentrated in the hands of a small group of often unaccountable insiders and “founders.” That type of environment, of fraudulent and deceptive outcomes, is exactly what consumer and investor protection laws were created for. 

Some investors in the industry have grown concerned about flagging returns in so-called managed futures, which bet on trends in liquid, mainstream currency, bond and stock markets. These funds have on average lost money in both of the previous calendar years. They are down in 2017, according to data group HFR.  That has prompted some investors to look further afield at harder-to-access markets where fewer hedge funds have so far ventured. 

Using Trend-Following Managed Futures to Increase Expected Withdrawal Rates, Miller Financial. [COMMENT: here is another paper (or, rather: possibly, maybe a tendentious submission to ssrn by a possibly, maybe self-interested individual party whose site was not available when I looked) on using trend following via managed futures to improve withdrawal rates.  I use trend following and managed futures so I am not averse to his arguments. On the other hand I have discussed before here that the impact on withdrawal that we are/he is talking about comes from volatility reduction and the making of a portfolio more efficient in a mean-variance sense. That means that the magic, if any, is not necessarily limited to trend following and/or managed futures if one wants to improve withdrawal rates, though those two in particular might be helpful depending on, well, depending on a lot of things. But I'd have to say Managed Futures, both the publicly available kind as well as private placements, have sucked a bit of late and by late I mean from about 2010. Or mine have, anyway. That's why links like the one above about GAM Holding AG exist.  My thought? Focus on efficiency first (and the many ways other than trend following to achieve it) and then think about trend following in that context second, and then maybe managed futures as a way to instantiate a trend-following mechanism third if it still makes sense.] 

SOCIETY AND CAPITAL

If we assume that structural and policy changes brought about the reduction in volatility, then, as long as those are maintained, the moderation ought to continue. However, if good fortune is responsible, we may still be waiting for the next shock that will bring about another increase in instability. 


On rational belief equilibria, Kurz Stanford 1994
Holding Rational Beliefs about future prices, producers maximize expected profits. In a Rational Belief Equilibrium (RBE) agents select diverse forecast functions but each one is rational in the sense that it is based on a theory which cannot be rejected by the data. It is shown that there exists a continuum of RBE's and they could entail very different patterns of time series for the economy and consequently different aggregate levels of long term volatility.  

The Behavioral and Consumption Effects of Social Security Changes (September 2017). Center for Retirement Research, Hou, Wenliang and Sanzenbacher, Geoffrey
Policymakers can expect individuals to delay retirement more in response to Social Security changes that reduce benefits than from changes that increase revenue. In terms of consumption, policymakers considering benefit cuts versus revenue increases face a tradeoff: a sharper reduction in consumption over the shorter span of retirement or a smaller, but more prolonged, reduction in consumption during the working life. 

Hunger Bonds, Tim Taylor interview with Ricardo Hausmann on Venezuela
"So usually you think that the capital markets are there to provide capital for good ideas that are going to generate value and pay back the loans and create other benefits for the borrower. So you think of capital markets as being angels for good in the world. But when capital markets have to deal with a government that is willing to compromise future cash flows for any cash up front, and it’s not using the resources to create any good things for the future, then you’re giving money to an authoritarian regime to mismanage in the short run and you are condemning the future of the country with obligations that they will not be able to afford to pay. So that’s why I call them hunger bonds. 

After a review of the literature, we identified three psychological constructs that help explain the feelings of resentment commonly felt toward wealthier individuals: (1) money ambivalence and cognitive dissonance; (2) the psychology of envy; and (3) the theory of relative deprivation. 

But yeah, if you aren't a raging failure of a human being and actually enrich your children's lives, then [early retirement] is definitely the best thing you can do with your time. [behold, I am validated] 

Rule by Starvation, WSJ book review
About 3.9 million people, or 13% of Ukraine’s population, died as Stalin pursued collectivization. Anna Reid reviews ‘Red Famine’ by Anne Applebaum. “I firmly believed,” remembered one, “that the ends justified the means. Our great goal was the universal triumph of Communism, and for the sake of the goal everything was permissible—to lie, to steal, to destroy hundreds of thousands and even millions of people, all those who were hindering our work or could hinder it, everyone who stood in the way. And to hesitate or doubt about all this was to give in to ‘intellectual squeamishness’ and ‘stupid liberalism.’ ” [emphasis added]

Many of the insights of behavioral economics can be viewed as a very useful warning to be wary of how choices and information are framed and presented, of how marketing is trying to influence your behavior. 

“THE retirement-savings crisis is a women’s crisis,” says Sallie Krawcheck, co-founder of Ellevest, a financial-advice firm for women in America. When it comes to retirement income, women are far worse-off than men. The gender pension-gap may be less well-known than the gender pay-gap, but it is in fact far larger. 

This slow rate of growth is linked to the stock of household debt and income inequality. Part of the political and economic dislocation within the U.S. can be traced back to the parlous state of middle class balance sheets  

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