Tag Archives: Target Date
The Target Date Industry Needs Appropriate Benchmarks
Target date funds have seen tremendous growth. At the end of 2019, assets in target date mutual funds reached nearly USD 1.4 trillion, impressive growth from USD 256 billion a decade ago.[1] Other than a brief dip in the fourth quarter of 2018, the growth of assets has been fairly stable with an upward trajectory…
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Standard Benchmarks Extend Standard of Living Through Retirement
What are the steps in selecting a retirement income option? Of course cost is one of the considerations, but did you know ERISA does not require selecting the lowest cost investments? These questions and more are explored in a recent video with Ian Kopelman (DLA Piper), and Tim Kohn (Dimensional Fund Advisors): What are some best…
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Benchmarking Retirement Withdrawal Strategies
Capital market benchmarks are, of course, widely used yardsticks of investment performance. For the production of the S&P STRIDE Index, in addition to providing performance data we also calculate hypothetical retirement income for vintages of the index that are at, or past, their target date. Hypothetical retirement income is expressed in index points, and can…
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The Power of a Consensus Glide Path
Some who follow target date fund (TDF) performance have taken note that lately, the S&P Target Date Index Series has outperformed many TDFs. In most historical periods, index performance was middle of the pack. However, 2015 was an exception, as shown in Report 2 of our Year-End 2015 Target Date Scorecard. Every vintage of the…
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Make Room for a New Target Date Category
Defined contribution (DC) plans, such as 401(k)s, place challenging demands on individuals, the highlights of which are to save diligently (which implies having adequate income, as well as budgeting abilities), to rationally select from among numerous investment vehicles, and to judiciously transition from wealth accumulation to income generation as retirement approaches. Innovations in plan design,…
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Benchmarking target date funds (TDFs) with market-driven indices ≠ performance chasing.
At their core, TDFs are professionally managed asset allocation policies. Questions therefore naturally arise around how (or even whether) they should be benchmarked with market indices. The investor(s) on whose behalf a particular policy is undertaken may have highly subjective criteria for success that have very little to do with outperforming market benchmarks. For example,…
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