I've received several variations of that question in response to my model bucket portfolios.
My answer, in short, is that the bucket approach--essentially
segmenting a portfolio by time horizon--is most useful for retirement
planning. Not only does an in-retirement bucket portfolio provide ready
cash reserves if the long-term components of the portfolio are at a low
ebb (and, therefore, not good candidates for selling) but in better
market environments, it also facilitates easy rebalancing to shake off
income for living expenses. By contrast, a bucketed portfolio will tend
to be less useful for accumulators, who are relying on their salaries,
rather than their portfolios, to meet their day-to-day cash needs.
That said, time-horizon considerations should be a key aspect of
portfolio planning for accumulators, too. Given that the S&P 500 has
had a positive return in rolling 10-year periods 95% of the time,
people who won't need to tap their portfolios for another decade can
reasonably steer the majority of their portfolios into stocks. Of
target-date funds geared toward people retiring in the year 2025, for
example, the average equity allocation is 72%. The typical equity
allocation among target-date funds geared toward 2055 retirees is 92%.
In addition to tilting their portfolios heavily toward stocks, people
with many years until retirement can also reasonably hold more in
potentially more volatile sub-asset classes, such as small-cap stocks
and foreign stocks and bonds, than individuals with shorter time
horizons. With less concern for short-term portfolio gyrations, they can
benefit from the extra diversification and potentially higher returns
that these sub-asset classes can provide. (This article discusses how sub-asset-class exposures should become more conservative as you get closer to retirement.)
Saver Portfolios for Varying Time Horizons, Management Preferences
With those considerations in mind, I've created a series of model
portfolios geared toward still-working people who are building up their
retirement nest eggs. The first three portfolios, which I'll feature
over the next few weeks, will consist of actively managed traditional
mutual funds; I've created aggressive, moderate, and conservative
versions. For investors who would rather use index funds than monkey
around with actively managed funds, I've created all-ETF portfolios for
aggressive, moderate, and conservative investors.
For all six portfolios, I've used Morningstar's Lifetime Allocation Indexes
to inform the asset allocations and the exposures to sub-asset classes.
To populate the portfolios, I employed no-load, open funds that
received Medalist ratings from Morningstar's analyst team. Most of the
funds earned Gold ratings, though I've used Silver- and Bronze-rated
funds in cases when suitable Gold-rated, no-load options that are
accepting new investments are unavailable.
Portfolio Basics
The Aggressive Retirement Saver mutual fund portfolio's weightings are as follows:
20%: Primecap Odyssey Growth (POGRX)
20%: Oakmark Fund (OAKMX)
15%: Diamond Hill Small-Mid Cap (DHMIX)
30%: Dodge & Cox International Stock (DODFX)
7%: T. Rowe Price International Discovery (PRIDX)
3%: Metropolitan West Total Return Bond (MWTRX)
5%: Harbor Commodity Real Return (HACMX)
The Aggressive Retirement Saver mutual fund portfolio uses the
allocations of Morningstar's Lifetime Allocation 2055 Aggressive Index
to guide its weightings. That index devotes more than 90% of its assets
to stocks, meaning that anyone considering such a portfolio should not
only have a long time horizon but should also be able to tolerate the
volatility that can accompany a very high equity allocation.
That said, such a portfolio could also make sense for investors with
shorter time horizons until retirement but ample income coverage in
retirement. For example, the person who intends to retire in 2020 with
in-retirement income needs covered entirely by a pension might
reasonably consider a similarly aggressive asset allocation.
Rather than employing separate holdings for large-cap value, blend,
and growth stocks, the portfolio employs two large-cap holdings--Oakmark
Fund, which employs a value-leaning strategy but lands in Morningstar's
large-blend category, and Primecap Odyssey Growth Stock for growth
exposure.
The portfolio tilts more heavily toward small- and mid-cap stocks
than is the case with a broad market index fund. It also stakes more
than a third of equity assets in foreign-stock funds: a broadly
diversified large-cap offering, Dodge & Cox International, as well
as one devoted to small- and mid-caps overseas, T. Rowe Price
International Discovery. Both offerings include a sizable complement of
emerging-markets equities.
Due to all of these characteristics--a slight tilt toward small- and
mid-caps and a large foreign- and emerging-markets weighting--the
portfolio has an aggressive cast. As such, I would expect it to perform
better than the broad market during strong equity environments and worse
on the downside.
How to Use
As with the bucket in-retirement portfolios, my key goal here is to
depict sound asset-allocation and portfolio-management principles rather
than to shoot out the lights with performance. That means that
investors with very long time horizons and/or very high risk capacities
could use it to help size up their own portfolios' asset allocations and
sub-allocations. Alternatively, investors can use the portfolio as a
source of ideas in building out their own portfolios. As with the bucket
portfolios, I'll employ a strategic (that is, long-term and hands-off)
approach to asset allocation; I'll make changes to the holdings only
when individual holdings encounter fundamental problems or changes.
Nearly all portfolios for investors in accumulation mode will be
stock-heavy, because longer time horizons mean these investors have time
to ride out bad markets. This aggressive portfolio will be especially
sensitive to stock market movements. It may likely lose more than the
broad market in sell-offs. Investors need to be prepared to stick with
it in those tough times or risk losing the longer-term benefits. To tamp
some of that volatility, we'll be adding Vanguard Dividend Growth (VDIGX) and making other adjustments in our upcoming moderate and conservative portfolios.
I developed the portfolios with open architecture in mind--that is, I
assumed that an investor wouldn't mind buying holdings from separate
firms. But because all of the holdings shown here are mainstream in
their exposures, investors who would like to stick with a single
provider or supermarket could likely find funds with similar
characteristics at their own firms. (Here again, Morningstar analysts' Medalist funds can come in handy.)
I also developed the portfolios without consideration for tax
efficiency--that is, I assumed they would be held inside of a
tax-sheltered wrapper of some kind, such as an IRA. Investors who intend
to hold their portfolios inside of a taxable account would want to put a
greater emphasis on tax efficiency, emphasizing index funds and ETFs on
the equity side, for example.
Culled from yahoo finance
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