Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

In this Discussion

Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.

    Support MFO

  • Donate through PayPal

Taking Risk out of the Market...commentary

beebee
edited August 2022 in Other Investing
I thought this was a pretty good read from Allison Schrager. Some interesting points regarding Fed policy and action that has impacted the economy and the market.
Getting rid of risk is the biggest risk. It seems like every time something bad happens in the economy we decide we need policies to keep it from ever happening again. And sometimes that is wise, say if a bad recession or stock market crash reveals some crazy distortion or externality that needs to be eliminated. But often, we tend to try to eliminate any bad thing.
On the Housing Market:
Now, the market is weird—sales down, prices up, and frozen in some places. And I think it will be screwy for a while because no one who got a cheap mortgage can afford to move. And the MBS market will be weird because no one will refinance either, so the duration of these securities is totally unpredictable.

and,

the Fed buying the entire MBS market in the middle of a housing boom?! That’s crazy, and it did not eliminate risk—it only created more.
On "nudging" the workforce into Target Date Funds:
nudging did have a big impact on investing. Before nudging, people kept their portfolio allocations pretty constant as they aged or kept their money in cash. But automatically enrolling people in target date funds (TDFs) means more people now own stock and move into bonds as they age.

Great. But the problem with TDFs is they don’t help people spend in retirement, and that is the whole point. And while I agree people should move into bonds as they age—because of lifecycle finance, not because a shorter time in markets is riskier—TDFs move people into the wrong kind of bonds. They are mostly in short-duration bonds (less than five years), while the duration of your future spending at retirement is more like 12 years. This leaves people exposed to interest rate, market, and inflation risks.

Nudging is not enough; you need good defaults too. And in a changing-rate, high-inflation environment, we’ll start to see the costs of TDFs’ shortcomings.
On Nepotism:
I meet a lot of people who do some unusual jobs: Sex workers, bounty hunters, mob hitmen, horse inseminators, pensions actuaries—you name it. And the first thing I always ask them is how they got into this line of work. And nine times out of 10, I hear, “My father.”
Article Link:
allisonschrager-helicopter-fed

Comments

  • edited August 2022
    A sign someone is making stuff up to bolster their case: They use familiar cliche stats like “nine times out of ten.” Really, she interviewed sex workers and hit men and they said it was their fathers who got them into the business via nepotism nine times out of ten? That must be an interesting fatherly chat about future careers when they’re children. While I agree nepotism is a problem, it tends to be more of one at the top than the bottom. Why not instead of glib statements, do some real analysis? How prevalent is it actually, in what jobs and what industries?

    It’s also amusing to me she’s fine with the government stepping in to address the “big risks” like a “crazy” stock market crash but seems to take issue with addressing millions of workers problems with retirement savings. Socialism for the rich in the form of a stock market bailout is OK in 2020, but everything else for workers is too much nanny state. Most Americans either have little stock exposure or none at all because they have little left over after they pay their bills. So why should the government bail the stock market out? In general, Main Street not Wall Street needs the bailouts. The two are interconnected to a degree, but not nearly as much in 2022 as they were in 1929.

    While I agree defaulting to short term bonds as target funds do when someone retires is overly simplistic, I imagine many workers are thankful they owned the short rather than long-term bonds right now. Also, short term bonds adjust to inflation and interest rate increases more quickly than long.
  • edited August 2022
    Nice @LewisBraham. I’m very worried about many workers dependent on 401-K savings for what could be 20, 30 or even 40 years of retirement. I’m fortunate to have a DB pension. But those are now few and far between. And, when it comes to managing / investing a 401-K, those who post on this forum possess better than average investment acumen. But in general few wage earners would appear equipped to manage a small fortune successfully and time the withdrawals so as to last a lifetime.

    Preventing workers from “borrowing” against their 401-K during their working years might be a start. Some retire with little if any left invested for growth. Perhaps limiting withdrawals to a set percentage or an amount that rises incrementally during retirement would help. As far as target-date funds go … the jury is still out on whether they’re the best approach as the default option. I know a few persons in their mid-60s who have already exhausted 100% of the money they contributed during 25-30 year careers. Suddenly they see their rent, fuel and food costs rising sharply. It’s really sad to witness. Maybe our politicians could stop throwing brickbats at one another long enough to address problems like this one.
  • @LewisBraham

    >> I imagine many workers are thankful they owned the short rather than long-term bonds right now. Also, short term bonds adjust to inflation and interest rate increases more quickly than long.

    uh

    Possibly individual bonds, if they knew what to do.

    But if they were in, say, BSV the last 2y/1y/ytd, or even 3y, or had given their money to supposedly smart bond people like the managers of FTBFX, PONAX, and/or DODIX, no, I don't think they are so thankful.
  • @LewisBraham...I believe that last quote (on nepotism) was purely funny. At least that was how I interpreted it.
  • edited August 2022
    @davidrmoran It depends on how target date funds mentioned in the piece allocate to short-term bond funds. Vanguard is the largest target date fund manager. It allocates its short-term bond exposure for retirees in its target date funds to VTAPX, i.e., Vanguard Short-Term Inflation-Protected Securities Index Fund Admiral Shares. That fund is down less than 1% in 2022, very good for this year's poor bond and stock market.

    @Bee I know. I was being a bit facetious myself regarding fatherly talks on careers. But I don't like generalizing on these sorts of topics much.
  • Schrager is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute-a right-wing think tank, so there's your explanation !
  • Double ding ! Another reason why one should wait until 70 for SS . A increase of 7 or is it 8% per year.
  • Good Afternoon,

    I'll just stay away from the political perspectives on this thread (I doubt you are going to sway me and I doubt I'm going to sway you)...but will say this.

    Wouldn't the better way to do this be to in addition to Soc Sec be to implement a kind of forced savings program thru an uncapped "I-Bond" like program and for cripes sake why is there an income cap on SSN? the SSN tax should go all the way up. Even I say that and believe you me, I don't care for all these taxes.

    I think Lewis B in the past has stated that there is NO guarantee that on a go forward basis the stonk market will provide the returns many need to retire in resonable comfort.

    Also, the guy who runs Standpoint BLNDX stated something on one of his podcasts that the stock market is NOT a utility, it is only there to provide for capital formation/funding to grow companies, it is NOT there to provide you with a smooth 8% a year...he mentioned that commodities are only there to provide a hedge for commercial hedgers. I'm paraphrasing so don't take my interpretation to seriously.

    We're all maybe kind of giddy with the double up volume and the bounce....but who knows the whammo could be around the corner, no one knows...it is kind of crazy to put your life savings on the line to a great extent....but to the victors belong the spoils...

    Good Luck and Good Health to ALL,

    Baseball Fan
  • edited August 2022
    We're all maybe kind of giddy with the double up volume and the bounce....but who knows the whammo could be around the corner, no one knows...it is kind of crazy to put your life savings on the line to a great extent....but to the victors belong the spoils...
    The question is--and it's an important one--is this level of uncertainty about one's financial future absolutely necessary or can it be changed? I recognize that "to the victor belong the spoils" is how the animal kingdom has functioned largely in a Darwinian sense since life began, but haven't we as a species evolved some from a winner-take-all or might-makes-right philosophy? The market dependent path is indeed an uncertain one, but I think institutions like Social Security were created to ensure that even the vulnerable, or at least, the elderly who are by default vulnerable have some piece of the spoils. While nothing in life is risk free--even the "risk-free" rate of T-bills--hitching our society's star entirely to market fluctuations and dynamics perhaps creates more uncertainty than there needs to be. The whole idea of a social safety net is to make life a little more civilized, a little less brutal, less dependent on the comically named "animal spirits."
  • @davidrmoran It depends on how target date funds mentioned in the piece allocate to short-term bond funds. [[my bf]] Vanguard is the largest target date fund manager. It allocates its short-term bond exposure for retirees in its target date funds to VTAPX, i.e., Vanguard Short-Term Inflation-Protected Securities Index Fund Admiral Shares. That fund is down less than 1% in 2022, very good for this year's poor bond and stock market.

    Come on --- you said, and keep saying, 'ST bond funds'. No and nope. (You will want to be careful in your good articles to avoid restating that.) VTAPX is not that, ST bond, as commonly understood. It performs like a Tips fund. Indeed, for $10k, VTAPX is within a few bucks (or tens of bucks over enough time) of STIP, exactly, always lagging except for ytd, maybe.

  • edited August 2022
    VTAPX absolutely is a short-term bond fund as far as the models for target date funds are concerned, and that's what I'm talking about and so is the article. In fact, in the Vanguard Target Retirement 2020 Fund for retirees, there are no other short-term bond funds in it but VTAPX: https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/mutual-funds/profile/vtwnx#portfolio-composition
    The fund has a larger allocation to regular intermediate term bond funds like Vanguard Total Bond Market II Index, which has not faired as well. But if you looked at any target-date fund, I would wager that the short-term bond funds in it have faired better than the intermediate and long-term ones, even if it was more focused on corporate debt than TIPS. That is a natural effect from duration and interest rate risk in a rising rate environment. Investors want that duration to be as short as possible so long as rates are rising. You want to go long once the rate increases are over. But the discussion I'm having is about target date funds specifically.
  • carew388 said:

    Schrager is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute-a right-wing think tank, so there's your explanation !

    yeah, she is a conservative (whatever that means anymore) macro economist, well-trained, but also in the past an FA, starting w DFA.

    She may be more famous now for having written a rather panned and seemingly obvious book An Economist Walks Into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk, which among many other things explains that street whores make way more than whorehouse employees, trading wages for risk reduction.
    A Frank Stein wrote [grammar-edited]:
    a primer on basic risk and reward analysis in economics. Most concepts, like the diversification of risk, the difference between systematic and idiosyncratic risk, the difference between hedging and insurance, will not be surprising even to those reading regular business news, but the treat here is the little stories Schrager tells to illustrate these ideas.
    Schrager shows how brothels pay their women less money, almost 50% less, than those women would earn on the streets, but these women trade off the income for risk reduction. The johns pay more for the safe experience though (up to 300% more, partially because both they and the women are affected by tax rates, which cuts wages and raises prices). She shows how horse-raising encourages high-risk, high-reward studs like War Front, who got $250,000 a mating session, or almost $25 million a year, even though the market leads to many failures and mass inbreeding (almost all thoroughbreds are descended from a single male in the early 1700s, the Darley Arabian. Another stud in the 1980s, Northern Dancer, sired most all of the next generation). She explains why paparazzi like Santiago Baez tried to organize "photogs" in the gold-rush era of the early 2000s, with each taking some percentage of the high-income photographs, but she also explains why incentives led most of these photogs to cheat and why the alliances fell apart.
    Etc.
  • explains that street whores make way more than whorehouse employees, trading wages for risk reduction.

    Not here in Ecuador, where ladies of the night work the streets when they can't get employment in the clubs. They make less due to both lower rates and fewer clients. Though here, they take their clients to rooms (including panic buttons) provided by their union, so they have a somewhat similar degree of safety. And like all people here, they get free health care, so health risks are reduced as well.

    How do I know? A few days ago we paid professionals (including a union officer) for their time. (I never thought I'd use that line so soon.)
  • +1 msf Hope you're not living in Guayaquil which has had problems with gang violence in recent days. I looked at relocating to Ecuador for health insurance, but hoping I can transition from the ACA to Medicare in 2026 !
  • (Guayaquil to Quito: the plane goes up and up and up and up and up... and then it lands. Giggle.)
  • Just traveling, not living in Ecuador. Nice place to visit (really! nice place), but living here I couldn't afford the sunscreen needed:-)
Sign In or Register to comment.