Discover the Hidden Risk in Your Portfolio
If you invest in Mutual Funds or Variable Annuities this video is for you
by Robert Lotter
The Battle of Risk and Reward in Your Portfolio
Statistic often have the effect of dulling our sense of reality. When government and businesses toss out percentages and lump us into pre-determined demographic groups, it’s hard to internalize whatever message they’re trying to convey. We get lost in the coldness of the data. The impersonal nature of raw numbers. Unless, of course, the statistic is so startling, so verifiable, it makes you stop dead in your tracks and nod in bewildering agreement.
Case in point: 80% of Americans have lost half or more of their entire portfolio in the last three years. Are you nodding?
If you’re a part of that 80%, no doubt the reporting of this statistic is a painful reminder of your losses. While we’re often taught to learn from our mistakes, in the case of investing it’s difficult to know both where we went wrong and how to prevent it from ever happening again; after all, we’re not experts…And we’re not expected to be. So to find out the answers we likely turn to the people who are, namely, the money managers and stockbrokers who recommended these failed investment strategies. Of course, talking to the experts will likely yield several different reasons for a plummeting portfolio.
From 9-11 and war to the recent crop of corporate and mutual fund scandals, you’ll likely see fingers pointed in every possible direction. Yet, a closer look reveals these events might not have contributed as much to these losses as initially thought. In fact, this phenomenon may actually be the result of something much more insidious and less obvious.
But to get there, we first have to examine why those otherwise accepted scapegoats are merely excuses which hold little or no veracity.Did the terrorist attacks and the market downturn that followed cause the collapse in our portfolios? While this catastrophic event may have contributed to some of the losses experienced within the last three years, it certainly doesn’t account for all of them. For one, the statistic is based on the last three years-a year and a half before that fateful September day-not to mention the economy was already experiencing a recession when the terrorists struck. But maybe the most compelling evidence comes when you look at the numbers.
By October 16th, a little over a month after the attack, the S&P 500 had already reached its September 10th level. Two years later, by September, 2003, the Nasdaq was up 10 percent from pre 9-11 totals. In addition, the Dow Jones closed at approximately 9,600 on September 10, 2001, and at the writing of this article, is well over 14,000.
Although we can all acknowledge 9-11 had some affect on our investment losses, we can also agree that it wasn’t the seminal event that led to 80% losing half or more of their portfolio.The next excuse represents the other big newsmaker and political talking point during the past few years: corporate fraud. But unless you were heavily invested in the companies involved in the bankruptcies and fraudulent accounting practices, such as Enron, Worldcom, and others, you likely saw very little affect on your portfolio.
And that brings us to the mutual fund scandal, which was exposed in late 2003. With more than 90 million Americans invested in mutual funds and a combined $7 trillion in assets, these products were once the darlings of the modern investor…But now?
“The mutual fund industry is the world’s largest skimming operation – a $7 trillion trough from which fund managers, brokers, and other insiders are steadily siphoning off an excessive slice of the nation’s household, college, and retirement savings,” explains Senator Peter Fitzgerald, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Financial Management.
The “beat up on mutual funds” bandwagon is in full swing…Even those professionals and popular investing websites who convinced you to invest in mutual funds are suddenly crying foul.Yet, long-term shareholder losses from the scandal measure approximately .06% in domestic equity funds, according to Eric Zitzewitz, Assistant Professor of Strategic Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. So as unethical and disturbing as these scandals may have been, they likely represent a mere drop in the bucket with regard to your overall earnings, particularly when compared to the substantial losses suffered by investors since the late 1990’s.
An Investment Gut Check
It’s no surprise that many Americans with retirement portfolios languishing at levels from a decade ago are wondering how they could have lost so much, so quickly. Incidentally, 77% of the accumulated wealth in this country is held by people over age 55, so it’s no secret what group was left most devastated by the losses. They were all likely scratching their heads in disbelief at this sudden, and significant drop off; after all, these investors had been assured by their brokers and planners that they were properly “diversified.” Diversification teaches investors to avoid putting all of their eggs in one basket, and it’s intended to help protect investors from market fluctuations. But if investors were truly diversified, why did 80% lose at least half or more of their entire portfolio? We’ve already established it wasn’t solely caused by the scandals currently breaking in the mutual fund industry, or 9-11, or the war, or corporate fraud…So what did happen? Risky investments, that’s what. As John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard Funds, one of the most prominent mutual fund companies in the world, explains, “We exploited the idea of a tech-led ‘new economy,’ and created some 500 new, and risky, aggressive growth and sector funds.” But if these investments were as risky as Mr. Bogle notes, how could investors have been convinced they were properly diversified? The proof may be in the pudding…Or rather the pie. When purchasing mutual funds, many investors are shown an asset allocation model in the form of a pie chart. Asset allocation is the process of dividing a portfolio among major asset categories, like- bonds
- stocks, or
- cash
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