By
Roger
Nusbaum
:
There was an
interesting article
on Seeking Alpha this weekend in which author Daniel Moser
dissected the 60/40 stock/bonds allocation. His starting point was
that the "normal' 60/40 portfolio grossly tilts risk toward the
equity portion, such that a 60/40 exposure results in a 95/5
allocation of risk taken. (I read the article twice and did not see
where he defined how he measured risk so, to keep my post simple, I
will just work with his assumptions.) He then tweaked a very basic
starting point of [[SPY]]/[[AGG]] into a combo of SPY and some
different bond funds so that the stock bonds mix was 40/60,
yielding a more balanced mix of risk between stocks and bonds.
What Moser appears to be doing is something that Cliff Asness
from AQR has talked about, which is allocating risk though not
necessarily allocating asset classes. In noting a 60/40 portfolio
consisting of SPY and AGG, in which almost all of the risk is
saddled on the SPY side of the ledger, Moser writes that "most will
agree" that "this is hardly a diversified portfolio."
While Moser is asking some good questions, I could not find
where he tells us why it makes for poor portfolio construction to
have 95% of the risk (again he did not define what he meant)
isolated in the equity exposure. What he seems to be saying is that
risk (what he means by the word) should be more balanced between
the two asset classes; as such, I think he was saying to allocate
more to bonds, but to take more risk with your bonds so that you
can have less exposure to equities.
This doesn't make a lot of sense to me, if that is what he is
saying, for a couple of reasons. First, depending on how more risk
is taken in the fixed income market you might as well be in
equities; at times the correlation between equities and high yield
debt can be very high. The other thing is that many people think
they own any fixed income at all to offset normal stock market
volatility (volatility and risk are not the same thing).
If that is the reason that many investors own fixed income (I
believe it is) then it is not clear what the benefit would be to
have less equities while increasing the risk of the fixed income
allocation. Also missing from the discussion was the fact that risk
can change over time. Generically speaking the US 10-year has more
risk at 1.7% than it did at 2.7% than it did at 5.7%. Bond risk
going forward could be much different than it was looking back.
I would say that I do not believe that the risk needs to be
allocated in the manner that I think Moser is talking about. If the
conversation gravitates to several different asset classes, as
Asness discusses, then that could very well be a different
story.
Again, I think the article asks a very good question. Having a
suitable asset allocation is a crucial element to a financial plan
succeeding but it is also difficult to construct. Go too aggressive
and the risk becomes panic selling at a generational low but going
too conservative could result, of course, in coming up short.
Because this is so important it is worth exploring different
theories (for those inclined to spend the time). If Mr. Moser comes
back to tell us
why
we should consider his theory, I would be very interested. For now
I will continue to view equities as the core asset class and use
the other asset classes to try to smooth out the ride and reduce
correlation. At our firm this obviously includes fixed income and
gold for almost every client but has also included foreign currency
and absolute return.
See also
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News
on seekingalpha.com