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Does Asset Allocation Policy Explain 40, 90, or 100 Percent of Performance? Authors' Response

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Disagreement about the importance of asset allocation policy stems from differences in what is considered important. Using data on balanced mutual funds and pension funds, we explore the ability of asset allocation policy to explain variability of returns across time, variation in return across funds, and the average level of return. We find that about 90% of the variability of returns of a typical fund across time is explained by policy; about 40% of the variation of returns across funds is explained by policy; and that on average, about 100% of the return level is explained by policy return. 1 I. Introduction How important is asset allocation policy? The answer depends on how you ask the question and what it is that you are trying to explain. According to the well known studies by Brinson et al. 1 , more than 90% of the variability of a typical plan sponsor's performance over time is due to asset allocation policy. So if you are trying to explain the variability of returns over...
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26 ©2000, Association for Investment Management and Research
Does Asset Allocation Policy Explain
40, 90, or 100 Percent of Performance?
Roger G. Ibbotson and Paul D. Kaplan
Disagreement over the importance of asset allocation policy stems from
asking different questions. We used balanced mutual fund and pension
fund data to answer the three relevant questions. We found that about 90
percent of the variability in returns of a typical fund across time is explained
by policy, about 40 percent of the variation of returns among funds is
explained by policy, and on average about 100 percent of the return level is
explained by the policy return level.
oes asset allocation policy explain 40 per-
cent, 90 percent, or 100 percent of perfor-
mance? The answer depends on how the
question is asked and what an analyst is
trying to explain. According to well-known studies
by Brinson and colleagues, more than 90 percent of
the variability in a typical plan sponsor’s perfor-
mance over time is the result of asset allocation
policy.
1
So, if one is trying to explain the variability
of returns over time, asset allocation is very impor-
tant.
Unfortunately, the Brinson et al. studies are
often misinterpreted and the results applied to
questions that the studies never intended to
answer. For example, an analyst might want to
know how important asset allocation is in explain-
ing the variation of performance among funds.
Because the Brinson studies did not address this
question, the analyst can neither look to them to
find the answer nor fault them for not answering it
correctly.
2
A different study is required.
Finally, an analyst might want to know what
percentage of the level of a typical fund’s return is
ascribable to asset allocation policy. Again, the
Brinson studies do not address this question. A
different study is needed.
Thus, three distinct questions remain about the
importance of asset
allocation:
1. How much of the variability of returns across
time is explained by policy (the question Brin-
son et al. asked)? In other words, how much of
a fund’s ups and downs do its policy bench-
marks explain?
2. How much of the variation in returns among
funds is explained by differences in policy? In
other words, how much of the difference
between two funds’ performance is a result of
their policy difference?
3. What portion of the return level is explained by
policy return? In other words, what is the ratio
of the policy benchmark return to the fund’s
actual return?
Much of the recent controversy about the
importance of asset allocation stems from treating
the answer that Brinson et al. provided to Question
1 as an answer to Questions 2 and 3.
The purpose of our study was to ask and
answer all three questions. To do this, we examined
10 years of monthly returns to 94 U.S. balanced
mutual funds and 5 years of quarterly returns to 58
pension funds. We performed a different analysis
for each question.
Framework
Our data consisted of the total return for each fund
for each period of time (a month or a quarter). The
first step in our analysis was to decompose each
total return, TR, into two components, policy return
and active return, as follows:
TR
i,t
= (1 + PR
i,t
)(1 + AR
i,t
) – 1,
where
TR
i,t
= total return of fund i in period t
PR
i,t
= policy return of fund i in period t
AR
i,t
= active return of fund i in period t
Roger G. Ibbotson is professor of finance at the Yale
School of Management and chair of Ibbotson Associates.
Paul D. Kaplan is the director of the Morningstar Center
for Quantitative Research. He was vice president and
chief economist at Ibbotson Associates when this article
was written.
D
Copyright 2000,
Financial Analysts Journal
.
Reproduced and republished with permission
from the Association for Investment Manage-
ment and Research. All rights reserved.
Does Asset Allocation Policy Explain 40, 90, or 100 Percent of Performance?
January/February 2000 27
Policy return is the part of the total return that
comes from the asset allocation policy. Active
return is the remainder. Active return depends on
both the manager’s ability to actively over- or
underweight asset classes and securities relative to
the policy and on the magnitude and timing of
those bets.
The asset allocation policy of each fund can be
represented as a set of asset-class weights that sum
to 1. For the pension funds in this study, these
weights were known in advance. For the mutual
funds, the policy weights were determined by
return-based style analysis, which is described in
the “Data” section. The policy return of the fund
over a given period of time can be computed from
the policy weights and returns on asset-class
benchmarks as follows:
PR
i,t
= w1
i
R1
t
+ w2
i
R2
t
+ … + wk
i
Rk
t
c,
where
w1
i
, w2
i
, . . ., wk
i
= policy weights of fund i
R1
t
, R2
t
, …, Rk
t
= returns on the asset classes
in period t
c = approximate cost of replicat-
ing the policy mix through
indexed mutual funds, as a
percentage of assets
Thus, in addition to fund returns, we needed policy
weights for each fund and total returns on
asset-class benchmarks. Given the total returns to
the funds and the estimated policy returns of the
funds, we solved for the active returns.
In our time-series analysis, we used the
period-by-period returns. In our cross-sectional
analysis, we used the compound annual rates of
return over the period of analysis. For each fund,
we computed the compound annual total return
over the entire period as follows:
where
TR
i
= compound annual total return on
fund i over the entire period of
analysis
TR
i,t
= total return of fund i in period t
T = number of period returns
N = length of the entire period of
analysis, in years
Similarly, we computed the compound annual
policy return over the entire period as follows:
where PR
i
is the compound annual policy return on
fund i over the entire period of analysis and PR
i,t
is
the policy return to fund i in period t.
Data
For the mutual fund portion of this study, we used
10 years of monthly returns for 94 U.S. balanced
funds. The 94 funds represent all of the balanced
funds in the Morningstar universe that had at least
10 years of data ending March 31, 1998. Policy
weights for each fund were estimated by perform-
ing return-based style analysis over the entire
120-month period.
3
Table 1 shows the asset-class
benchmarks used and the average fund exposure
to each asset class.
In calculating the policy returns for each fund,
we assumed that the cost of replicating the policy
mix through index mutual funds would be 2 basis
points a month (approximately 25 bps annually).
TR
i
1 TR
i 1,
+()1 TR
i 2,
+()1 TR
iT,
+()
N
1,=
PR
i
1 PR
i 1,
+()1 PR
i 2,
+()1 PR
iT,
+()
N
1,=
Table 1. Asset Classes and Benchmarks for Balanced Mutual Funds
Asset Class Benchmark Average Allocation
Large-cap U.S. stocks CRSP 1–2 portfolio
a
37.4%
Small-cap U.S. stocks CRSP 6–8 portfolio
a
12.2
Non-U.S. stocks MSCI Europe/Australasia/Far East Index 2.1
U.S. bonds Lehman Brothers Aggregate Bond Index 35.2
Cash 30-day U.S. T-bills
b
13.2
a
Constructed by CRSP. CRSP excludes unit investment trusts, closed-end funds, real estate investment
trusts, Americus trusts, foreign stocks, and American Depositary Receipts from the portfolios. CRSP uses
only NYSE firms to determine the size breakpoints for the portfolios. Specifically, CRSP ranks all eligible
NYSE stocks by company size (market value of outstanding equity) and then splits them into 10 equally
populated groups, or deciles. The largest companies are in Decile 1, and the smallest are in Decile 10. The
capitalization for the largest company in each decile serves as the breakpoint for that decile. Breakpoints
are rebalanced on the last day of trading in March, June, September, and December. CRSP then assigns
NYSE and Amex/Nasdaq companies to the portfolios according to the decile breakpoints. Monthly
portfolio returns are market-cap-weighted averages of the individual returns within each of the 10
portfolios. The 1–2 portfolio is the combination of Deciles 1 and 2, and the 6–8 portfolio is the combination
of Deciles 6, 7, and 8.
b
Ibbotson Associates (1998).
Financial Analysts Journal
28 ©2000, Association for Investment Management and Research
Stevens, Surz, and Wimer (1999) provided the
same type of analysis on quarterly returns of 58
pension funds over the five-year 1993–97 period.
4
We used the actual policy weights and asset-class
benchmarks of the pension funds, however, rather
than estimated policy weights and the same
asset-class benchmarks for all funds. In each quar-
ter, the policy weights were known in advance of
the realized returns.
5
We report the pension fund
results together with our analysis of the mutual
fund returns in the next section.
Questions and Answers
Now consider the original three questions posed by
the study: How much of the variability of return
across time is explained by asset allocation policy,
how much of the variation among funds is
explained by the policy, and what portion of the
return level is explained by policy return?
Question #1: Variability across Time. The
Brinson et al. studies from 1986 and 1991 answered
the question of how much of the variability of fund
returns is explained by the variability of policy
returns. They calculated the result by regressing
each fund’s total returns (TR
i,t
in our notation)
against its policy returns (PR
i,t
), reporting the R
2
value for each fund in the study, then examining
the average, median, and distribution of these
results.
Figure 1 illustrates the meaning of the
time-series R
2
with the use of a single fund from
our sample. In this example, we regressed the 120
monthly returns of a particular mutual fund
against the corresponding monthly returns of the
fund’s estimated policy benchmark. Because most
of the points cluster around the fitted regression
line, the R
2
is quite high. About 90 percent of the
variability of the monthly returns of this fund can
be explained by the variability of the fund’s policy
benchmark.
In the first Brinson et al. study (1986), the
authors studied quarterly returns over the 1974–83
period for 91 large U.S. pension funds. The average
R
2
was 93.6 percent. In the second Brinson et al.
study (1991), they studied quarterly returns over
the 1978–87 period for 82 large U.S. pension funds.
The average R
2
was 91.5 percent. Based on these
results, the authors stated that more than 90 percent
of the variability of the average fund’s return across
time is explained by that fund’s policy mix.
The Brinson et al. results show that strategic
asset allocation explains much of the variability of
pension fund returns because plan sponsors select
a long-term strategic target and tend to stick to it.
Figure 1. Time-Series Regression of Monthly Fund Return versus Fund
Policy Return: One Mutual Fund, April 1988–March 1998
Note: The sample fund’s policy allocations among the general asset classes were 52.4 percent U.S.
large-cap stocks, 9.8 percent U.S. small-cap stocks, 3.2 percent non-U.S. stocks, 20.9 percent U.S. bonds,
and 13.7 percent cash.
10
8
6
4
2
0
–2
–4
–6
–8
Fund Return
(% per month)
–8 10
Policy Return (% per month)
–6
–4 024 6–2 8
R
2
= 0.90
Does Asset Allocation Policy Explain 40, 90, or 100 Percent of Performance?
January/February 2000 29
If plan sponsors were more active, the R
2
s would
be lower.
The results from our analysis of both the
mutual fund and the pension data are presented in
Table 2, together with the Brinson et al. results. Our
results confirm the Brinson result that approxi-
mately 90 percent of the variability of a fund’s
return across time is explained by the variability of
policy returns. The result in our study for the
median mutual fund was 87.6 percent, and the
result for the median pension fund was 90.7 per-
cent. The mean results in our study were slightly
lower (81.4 percent and 88.0 percent, respectively)
because they were skewed by the effect of a few
outlier funds. These results are consistent with the
notion that pension fund managers as a group are
less active than balanced mutual fund managers.
Table 3 displays the range of outcomes in our
study and shows that the mutual funds were more
active than the pension funds. The mutual fund at
the 5th percentile of R
2
had only 46.9 percent of the
variability of returns explained by the variability of
returns of the policy, whereas for the fund at the
95th
percentile, the R
2
was 94.1 percent. For the
pension funds, the R
2
s are in the tighter range of
66.2 percent at the 5th percentile and 97.2 percent
at the 95th percentile.
We next considered that the time-series R
2
may
be high simply because funds participate in the
capital markets in general and not because they
follow a specific asset allocation policy. We
explored this idea by regressing each mutual fund’s
total returns against the total returns to a common
benchmark (rather than each against the returns to
its own policy benchmark). For common bench-
marks, we used the S&P 500 Index and the average
of all of the policy benchmarks shown in Table 1.
The results are shown in Table 4. With the S&P
500 as the benchmark for all funds, the average R
2
was more than 75 percent and the median was
nearly 82 percent. With the average policy bench-
marks across funds as the benchmark, the average
R
2
was nearly 79 percent and the median was more
than 85 percent. These results are relatively close to
those obtained when we used each specific fund’s
benchmark. Hence, the high R
2
in the time-series
regressions result primarily from the funds’ partic-
ipation in the capital markets in general, not from
the specific asset allocation policies of each fund. In
other words, the results of the Brinson et al. studies
and our results presented in Table 2 are a case of a
rising tide lifting all boats.
Hensel, Ezra, and Ilkiw (1991) made a similar
point in their study of the importance of asset allo-
cation policy. In their framework, a naive portfolio
had to be chosen as a baseline in order to evaluate
the importance of asset allocation policy. They
pointed out that in the Brinson et al. studies, the
baseline portfolio was 100 percent in cash. In other
words, the Brinson studies were written as if the
alternative to selecting an asset allocation policy
were to avoid risky assets altogether. When we
used a more realistic baseline, such as the average
policy benchmark across all funds, we found that
the specific policies explain far less than half of the
remaining time-series variation of the funds’
returns.
Question #2: Variation among Funds. To
answer the question of how much of the variation
in returns among funds is explained by policy dif-
ferences, one must compare funds with each other
through the use of cross-sectional analysis. Many
people mistakenly thought the Brinson studies
answered this question. If all funds were invested
passively under the same asset allocation policy,
there would be no variation among funds (yet 100
Table 2. Comparison of Time-Series
Regression Studies
Measure
Brinson
1986
Brinson
1991
Mutual
Funds
Pension
Funds
R
2
Mean 93.6% 91.5% 81.4% 88.0%
Median NA NA 87.6 90.7
Active return
a
Mean –1.10 –0.08 –0.27 –0.44
Median NA NA 0.00 0.18
NA = not available.
a
Active return is expressed as a percentage per year.
Table 3. Range of Time-Series Regression
R
2
Values
Percentile Mutual Funds Pension Funds
5 46.9% 66.2%
25 79.8 94.1
50 87.6 90.7
75 91.4 94.7
95 94.1 97.2
Table 4. Explaining a Mutual Fund’s Time
Series of Returns Using Different
Benchmarks
R
2
S&P 500 Average Policy Fund’s Policy
Mean 75.2% 78.8% 81.4%
Median 81.9 85.2 87.6
Financial Analysts Journal
30 ©2000, Association for Investment Management and Research
percent of the variability of returns across time of
each fund would be attributable to asset allocation
policy). If all funds were invested passively but had
a wide range of asset allocation policies, however,
all of the variation of returns would be attributable
to policy.
To answer the question of how much of the
variation in returns among funds is explained by
policy differences, we compared each fund return
with each other fund’s return. We carried out a
cross-sectional regression of compound annual
total returns, TR
i
, for the entire period on com-
pound annual policy returns, PR
i
, for the entire
period. The R
2
statistic of this regression showed
that for the mutual funds studied, 40 percent of the
return difference was explained by policy and for
the pension fund sample, the result was 35 percent.
Figure 2 is the plot of the 10-year compound
annual total returns against the 10-year compound
annual policy returns for the mutual fund sample.
This plot demonstrates visually the relationship
between policy and total returns. The mutual fund
result shows that, because policy explains only 40
percent of the variation of returns across funds, the
remaining 60 percent is explained by other factors,
such as asset-class timing, style within asset classes,
security selection, and fees. For pension funds, the
variation of returns among funds that was not
explained by policy was ascribable to the same
factors and to manager selection.
The cross-sectional R
2
depended on how much
the asset allocation policies of funds differed from
one another and on how much the funds engaged
in active management. To see how much asset allo-
cation policies differed, we examined the cross-sec-
tional distributions of the style weights. Table 5
presents the cross-sectional averages, standard
deviations, and various percentiles of the style
weights of the mutual funds. The last column pre-
sents these statistics for the total style allocation to
equity. The large standard deviations and spreads
between the percentiles indicate large variations in
asset allocation policies among the funds.
Given how diverse the asset allocation policies
are among these mutual funds, the relatively low
R
2
of 40 percent must be the result of a large degree
Figure 2. Fund versus Policy: 10-Year Compound Annual Return across
Funds, April 1988–March 1998
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
10-Year Compound Annual
Fund Return (%)
6 18
10-Year Compound Annual Policy Return (%)
8
10 14 1612
R
2
= 0.40
Does Asset Allocation Policy Explain 40, 90, or 100 Percent of Performance?
January/February 2000 31
of active management. To see how the degree of
active management can affect the cross-sectional
R
2
, we calculated the cross-sectional R
2
between the
10-year annual returns of the policy benchmarks
and the 10-year annual returns of a set of modified
fund returns. Each modified fund return was a
weighted average of the actual fund return with the
return on the policy benchmark so that the degree
of active management was adjusted as follows:
where the value of x sets the level of active manage-
ment. Setting x equal to 1 gives the sample result.
Setting x less than 1 reduces the level of active
management below what the funds actually did.
Setting x greater than 1 shorts the benchmark and
takes a levered position in the fund, thus increasing
the level of active management beyond what the
funds actually did.
The compound annual return of modified fund
returns, , was calculated the same way as the
compound annual return of actual fund returns (i.e.,
as the geometric mean of the modified annual
returns).
Figure 3 shows the cross-sectional R
2
from
regressing the modified compound annual returns
on compound annual policy returns for various val-
ues of x. At x = 1, the cross-sectional R
2
is our original
result, 40 percent. If the funds had been half as active
(x = 0.5), the R
2
would have been much higher, 81
percent. On the other hand, if the funds had been
one-and-a-half times as active (x = 1.5), the R
2
would
have been only 14 percent. Thus, this approach
shows how the degree of active management affects
the cross-sectional R
2
.
Table 5. Cross-Sectional Distributions of Balanced Mutual Fund Policy
Weights
Measure
Large-Cap
U.S. Stocks
Small-Cap
U.S. Stocks
Non-U.S.
Stocks U.S. Bonds Cash Total Equities
Average 37.4% 12.2% 2.1% 35.2% 13.2% 51.6%
Standard deviation 17.0 7.6 2.3 14.4 15.9 16.0
Percentile
5 1.2 1.1 0.0 12.8 0.0 23.3
25 29.9 7.1 0.0 26.6 1.0 44.5
50 40.2 11.0 1.5 35.2 7.7 54.5
75 48.8 16.5 3.1 45.1 17.5 62.0
95 56.2 24.8 6.4 56.7 47.3 74.1
TR*
it,
xTR
it,
1 x()PR
it,
,+=
TR*
i
Figure 3. Degree of Active Management versus Cross-Sectional
R
2
,
April 1988–March 1998
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Cross-Sectional R
2
(%)
0 2
Degree of Active Management
0.5 1 1.5
81%
40% (mutual fund sample)
14%
More ActiveLess Active
Financial Analysts Journal
32 ©2000, Association for Investment Management and Research
Question #3: Return Level. Many people
also mistakenly thought the Brinson et al. studies
were answering what portion of the return level is
explained by asset allocation policy return, with an
answer indicating nearly 90 percent. Brinson and his
co-authors were not, however, addressing this ques-
tion. We can address the question by using the Brin-
son data and the new data from our pension fund and
mutual fund studies. We calculated the percentage of
fund return explained by policy return for each fund
as the ratio of compound annual policy return, PR
i
,
divided by the compound annual total return, TR
i
.
This ratio of compound returns is really simply a
performance measure. A fund that stayed exactly at
its policy mix and invested passively will have a ratio
of 1.0, or 100 percent, whereas a fund that outper-
formed its policy will have a ratio less than 1.0.
Table 6 shows the percentage of fund return
explained by policy return for the Brinson studies
and the two data sets used in this study. On average,
policy accounted for a little more than all of total
return. The one exception is the pension fund sample
in this study, where the mean result was 99 percent.
The pension data did not have any expenses sub-
tracted, however, so if we included external man-
ager fees, pension staff costs, and other expenses, the
result would probably be close to 100 percent, mean-
ing that no value was added above the benchmark.
On average, the pension funds and balanced mutual
funds are not adding value above their policy bench-
marks because of a combination of timing, security
selection, management fees, and expenses. More-
over, results for both groups here may even be better
than expected because the timing component might
include some benefit from not rebalancing (letting
equities run), which would have helped returns in
the sample period’s nearly continuous U.S. equity
bull market.
The range of percentage of fund return explained
by policy return is shown in Table 7. The mutual
funds have a wider range because they are more
willing to make timing and selection bets against the
benchmark.
These results were anticipated by Sharpe
(1991). He pointed out that because the aggregation
of all investors is the market, the average perfor-
mance before costs of all investors must equal the
performance of the market. Because costs do not net
out across investors, the average investor must be
underperforming the market on a cost-adjusted
basis. The implication is that, on average, more than
100 percent of the level of fund return would be
expected from policy return. Of course, this out-
come is not assured for subsamples of the market,
such as balanced mutual funds or pension funds.
In our analysis, a fund’s policy return mea-
sures the performance of the asset classes in which
that fund invests. Therefore, based on Sharpe’s
thesis, we would predict that, on average, a little
more than 100 percent of the level of total return
would be the result of policy return.
6
Our results
confirm this prediction.
This is not to say that active management is
useless. An investor who has the ability to select
superior managers before committing funds can
earn above-average returns. If, as Goetzmann and
Ibbotson (1994) suggested, superior performance
and inferior performance persist over time, one
need only invest in the funds that have outper-
formed in the past. Nevertheless, the average
return across all funds in the market cannot be
greater than the return on the market.
Conclusion
We sought to answer the question: What part of
fund performance is explained by asset allocation
policy? If we think of this issue as a multiple-choice
question with “40 percent,” “90 percent,” “100 per-
cent,” and “all of the above” as the choices, our
analysis shows that asset allocation explains about
90 percent of the variability of a fund’s returns over
time but it explains only about 40 percent of the
variation of returns among funds. Furthermore, on
average across funds, asset allocation policy
explains a little more than 100 percent of the level of
returns. So, because the question can be interpreted
in any or all of these ways, the answer is “all of the
above.”
Table 6. Percentage of Total Return Level
Explained by Policy Return
Study Average Median
Brinson 1986 112% NA
Brinson 1991 101 NA
Mutual funds 104 100%
Pension funds 99 99
NA = not available.
Table 7. Range of Percentage of Total Return
Level Explained by Policy Return
Percentile Mutual Funds Pension Funds
5 (best) 82% 86%
25 94 96
50 100 99
75 112 102
95 (worst) 132 113
This article grew out of discussions with Ron Surz. We
thank Dale Stevens for providing the pension fund data
and Mark Wimer of Ibbotson Associates for his able
assistance.
Does Asset Allocation Policy Explain 40, 90, or 100 Percent of Performance?
January/February 2000 33
Notes
1. Brinson, Hood, and Beebower (1986); Brinson, Singer, and
Beebower (1991).
2. The essence of Jahnke’s (1997) critique of the Brinson et al.
studies is that they used time-series R
2
s to address the
question of cross-sectional variability. This critique is unfair
because the Brinson studies never addressed the cross-
sectional question.
3. Return-based style analysis was first proposed by Sharpe
(1992). See Lucas (1998) for a detailed discussion.
4. The results are reported in Stevens, Surz, and Wimer,
together with the mutual fund results reported here.
5. The average allocations among the general asset classes
used in the pension fund study were 43.7 percent U.S.
stocks, 38.0 percent U.S. bonds, 5.0 percent cash, and 13.3
percent other asset classes.
6. We have taken out the cost of indexing from the policy
return, so the average underperformance of the fund is less
than what Sharpe’s analysis would suggest.
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and Scott L. Lummer. New York: Panel Publishers.
Sharpe, William F. 1991. “The Arithmetic of Active
Management.” Financial Analysts Journal, vol. 47, no. 1 (January/
February):7–9.
———. 1992. “Asset Allocation: Management Style and
Performance Measurement.” Journal of Portfolio Management,
vol. 18, no. 2 (Winter):7–19.
Stevens, Dale H., Ronald J. Surz, and Mark E. Wimer. 1999. “The
Importance of Investment Policy.” Journal of Investing, vol. 8,
no. 4 (Winter):80–85.
... The study of Ibbotson and Kaplan (2000) concludes that around 90% of asset performance and around 40% of a portfolio performance can be explained by the investment strategy used. Then the strategy balance between risks and returns can be explained through accurate asset distribution according to the investor's investment goals, risk profile, and investment period. ...
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This article analyzes equally weighted strategic asset allocation portfolios in Brazil between 2004 and 2016 and shows that their average returns are not always statistically greater than those of balanced funds, with significance changing in sub-periods. Fixed-income portfolios frequently outperform balanced funds, whose active management underperforms their declared benchmark portfolios. Balanced funds underperformed probably because they deviated from their investment policy. Transaction costs and other rebalancing frequencies do not change the conclusions. Robustness tests indicate that this evidence is valid out-of-the-sample. Investors can mimic balanced-fund policy and possibly do better by means of indexing according to this policy.
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This study examines collectible automobiles as an investable alternative asset class. The author discusses the literature related to alternative asset classes, and how collectible automobiles fit into this context. Based on a sample dataset covering the period 2007-2016, the research also presents empirical results on collectible automobiles as an asset class based on risk, returns, and portfolio benefits. The findings indicate that, during the sample period, collectible automobiles exhibited holding period returns superior to traditional equity, bond, and gold investments. The author also finds that the asset class offers riskadjusted returns that compare favorably with other investments. Finally, he shows that collectible automobiles offer potential portfolio diversification benefits.
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Academic research (Markowitz [1952], Tobin [1958], Brinson et al. [1986, 1991], Ibbotson and Kaplan [2000], Malkiel [1999], Swensen [2005], and others) strongly suggests that asset allocation is the key to steady wealth accumulation. A growing trend in the investment industry is the use of alternative asset classes to generate risk-adjusted portfolio return. The advent of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and exchange-traded notes (ETNs) has opened investment opportunities to average investors that historically were available only to the very wealthy, and even then only through special investment vehicles.
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Numerous academic studies have shown that asset allocation is the single most important determinant of portfolio returns. We accept this premise but note that an optimal asset allocation strategy must still be determined based on dynamic conditions. Using the principles of intermarket analysis and the relationship between the total return of the 10-year Treasury and the 30-year Treasury, we develop one such strategy. We find that an active strategy that uses the signaling power of these Treasury bonds to position into either the stock market or Treasuries can be used to outperform a buy and hold stock portfolio on an absolute and risk-adjusted basis. We also find that the signaling power of Treasuries can be used to enhance asset allocation decisions and traditional rebalancing. The predictive behavior of Treasuries on equities is a market anomaly that has persisted over time, and has served as an anticipatory gauge of expansionary or contractionary conditions which favor stocks or bonds. Contrary to the Efficient Market Hypothesis, the information provided by relative total return Treasury movement does not appear to be priced in immediately by broad stock market averages, and therefore may be exploitable for active traders and tactical asset allocators.
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We examine the asset allocation, returns and expenses of superannuation funds whose assets are mainly invested in default investment options. A majority of these funds fail to earn returns commensurate with their asset allocation policy. It appears that much of the variation in returns between these funds is a result of engaging in significant active management of assets. Our results indicate that the returns from active management of retail funds are negatively related to expenses, whereas the relationship is positive for industry funds. We also find strong evidence of economies of scale existing in superannuation funds across different size categories.
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401(k) plan participants to show a pie chart demonstrating that asset allocation--predominantly the allocation among stocks, bonds and cash--is the most important invest-ment decision, explaining 93.6 percent of portfolio returns. The presentations generally show how historical combi-nations of stocks, bonds and cash have performed over various time periods: the longer the time period, the greater the certainty that stocks will outper-form bonds or cash based on historical data. The presentations go on to dis-cuss mutual fund options offered to implement the asset allocation advice. The presumption by the investor or the plan participant is that once the risk tolerance (and possibly the time horizon) has been established, invest-ing is simply a matter of implementing a fixed mix of stocks, bonds and cash using the mutual funds being offered. The industry standard for assessing the importance of asset allocation poli-cy in determining portfolio perfor-mance is based upon the study, "Determinants of Portfolio Performance" by Brinson, Hood and Beebower (BHB). Published in the Financial Analysts Journal in July/August 1986, it is widely cited for its conclu-sion that 93.6 percent of the variation of returns is explained by asset alloca-tion policy. 1 Unfortunately, both the study's conclusions and the interpreta-tion of those conclusions are wrong. The BHB Study Using quarterly investment returns of 91 pension plans in the SEI Large Pension Plans Universe for a ten-year period beginning in 1974, the BHB study provides an innovative approach to evaluating the relative contribu-tions of asset allocation policy (that is, establishing long-term, or what BHB call normal, allocations that don't change over the investment period), market timing and security selection. In the study, BHB comment on several methodological problems that require them to make certain assump-tions for their analysis to go forward. First, they assume that the average asset class weights for the period stud-ied are the same as the actual normal policy weights. Second, they assume that investments in foreign stocks, real estate, private placements and venture capital can be proxied by a mix of stocks, bonds and cash. Third, they assume that the benchmarks for stocks, bonds and cash against which fund performance was measured are appropriate. Each of these assumptions can lead to a faulty measurement of success or lack of success at market timing and stock selection. The study then reports the results of the relative importance of asset allocation policy, market timing and stock selection. Over the ten-year period studied, market timing and stock selection cost the plans, on aver-age, 1.1 percent each year. The range of policy return outcomes is small, which reflects the tendency of similar plans to gravitate toward a similar pol-icy mix. Brinson, Hood and Beebower also analyze what they call the ability of asset allocation policy to dictate actual plan returns. They measure the aver-age (across the 91 pension plans) amounts of variance of total portfolio returns explained by asset allocation policy, market timing and stock selec-tion using statistical regression analy-sis. They conclude that asset alloca-tion policy explains, on average, 93.6 percent of total variation in quarterly returns; in particular plans, it explains no less than 75.5 percent and up to 98.6 percent of total return variation. Based on the observation that asset allocation policy explains 93.6 percent of total return variation, BHB recommend that deciding which asset classes to include in the portfolio and determining the normal weights for each of the asset classes allowed in the portfolio are properly part of invest-ment policy. It should be noted that BHB do not analyze the decision-making process used to determine asset alloca-tion policy, market timing and stock selection. They do not provide any insight into why some plan sponsors did well and others poorly in each of the areas being measured.
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Several different decisions, including asset allocation, security selection and market timing, affect the return to a pension fund (or any investor). The impact of each type of decision can be measured by comparing a portfolio’s actual return with the return on a hypothetical portfolio that does not reflect a particular decision that went into the real portfolio. The critical element in the comparison is defining the naive alternative to the decision. When asset allocation is the decision being evaluated, the naive alternative is not obvious. If treasury bills are the appropriate naive alternative, then asset allocation is, as commonly thought, the single decision with the greatest impact on a typical pension fund’s return. But if a diversified mix (such as the average asset mix across large pension funds) is the alternative, then the impact of departing from this naive allocation may be no greater than the impact of other decisions, including security selection.
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In order to delineate investment responsibility and measure performance contribution, pension plan sponsors and investment managers need a clear and relevant method of attributing returns to those activities that compose the investment management process—investment policy, market timing, and security selection. The authors provide a simple framework based on a passive, benchmark portfolio representing the plan's long-term asset classes, weighted by their long-term allocations. Returns on this "investment policy" portfolio are compared with the actual returns resulting from the combination of investment policy plus market timing (over- or underweighting within an asset class). Data from 91 large U.S. pension plans over the 1974-83 period indicate that investment policy dominates investment strategy (market timing and security selection), explaining on average 95.6 percent of the variation in total plan return. The actual mean average total return on the portfolio over the period was 9.01 percent, versus 10...
Analyzing Manager Style” In Pension Investment HandbookThe Arithmetic of Active ManagementAsset Allocation: Management Style and Performance MeasurementThe Importance of Investment Policy
  • Lori Lucas
  • Supplement
  • W Mark
  • Scott L Riepe
  • Lummer
  • Sharpe
  • William
Lucas, Lori. 1998. “Analyzing Manager Style.” In Pension Investment Handbook, 1998 Supplement. Edited by Mark W. Riepe and Scott L. Lummer. New York: Panel Publishers. Sharpe, William F. 1991. “The Arithmetic of Active Management.” Financial Analysts Journal, vol. 47, no. 1 (January/ February):7–9. ———. 1992. “Asset Allocation: Management Style and Performance Measurement.” Journal of Portfolio Management, vol. 18, no. 2 (Winter):7–19. Stevens, Dale H., Ronald J. Surz, and Mark E. Wimer. 1999. “The Importance of Investment Policy.” Journal of Investing, vol. 8, no. 4 (Winter):80–85.
Stocks, Bonds, Bills, and Inflation
  • Ibbotson Associates
Ibbotson Associates. 1998. Stocks, Bonds, Bills, and Inflation, 1998 Yearbook. Chicago, IL: Ibbotson Associates
Analyzing Manager Style In Pension Investment Handbook
  • Lori Lucas
Lucas, Lori. 1998. "Analyzing Manager Style." In Pension Investment Handbook, 1998 Supplement. Edited by Mark W. Riepe and Scott L. Lummer. New York: Panel Publishers.