Almost exactly a year ago my friend David died, struck down by a heart attack just before his 60th birthday.
Within a particular part of my social circle, where David played a significant role, I and others still mourn his absence. Things just aren’t the same.
But as I wrote at the time, David’s sudden death also prompted something of a re-think here at Greybeard Towers.
Specifically, the realisation that my wife – who has never really been very interested in our investing – needed to be a lot closer to the management of our investments than she had been previously.
Because if I suddenly went the same way as David, she’ll be left on her own to manage not just her pension pot and ISA, but my own – somewhat larger – investments as well.
Hitherto, I’d been the one doing the wealth management for both of us.
Making a start
We began almost immediately.Progress has been good, although there’s still a considerable journey ahead.
The file for her pension now resides in her study, and not in my office. She has the login details, and she – not me – logs in to obtain valuations and make purchases.
Does she like and enjoy it? No. But I’m left with a sense of comfort that should I suddenly expire, the management of her pension won’t quite be the alien territory it once was.
Even so, I’m very aware that all our other investments are still under my care, spread across four other investment platforms. While the journey has begun, there’s still some distance to cover.
That said, it’s a journey that has been given a little extra impetus from three distinct sources.
Income as a carrot
The first was the fact that I had begun positioning our pension portfolios towards a more income-centric stance.
And while it’s fair to say that my wife isn’t especially excited by capital gains made by index trackers, income-focused investment trusts (and index trackers’ income units) are a different matter.
Particularly with interest rates still obstinately stuck at a historic low.
With the investment platform in question handily displaying annual dividend income at the click of a mouse, my wife can readily see how once-abstract investment decisions are contributing to her future standard of living in a manner that could hardly be more concrete.
Hello, retirement
Which leads us nicely to the second source of impetus.
For that future standard of living has itself acquired a certain immediacy.
Last summer my wife was offered and took early retirement, receiving a lump sum redundancy payment on top of her lump sum local government pension payment.
And so, at the beginning of August, she became a lady of leisure.
A lady of leisure with both the time to take more of an interest in her financial affairs, and (thanks to those two lump sums), some active investment choices to make, too.
Choices that, to her credit, she has been making.
Will power
The third source of impetus is a little more sombre.
Back in 1986, we each made wills, written for us by my bank, and with the bank nominated as the executor.
The bank in question has recently made some changes to its probate service, prompting us to re-think whether we wished to use it as an executor.
Particularly since we now have two more-or-less grown-up children, who hadn’t even been born when the wills were drawn up.
The result: A serious family discussion with the kids, on the subject of them taking over the role of executors. In the course of which, it became apparent just how much our investments had grown over the years.
So the wills are now in the process of being updated, with the kids appointed as executors.
Somehow, the whole investment management business now seems a little more serious.
What we’re managing isn’t just our retirement, but the kids’ inheritance.
Don’t fear the reaper
Where next? The journey continues, in short. Our investments need to become precisely that – our investments – and in due course, see the kids involved as well.
That said, I’m still several years short of the state pension age, and intend carrying on working long after it.
But should the Grim Reaper call, we’re rather more prepared than we were last year.
And going forward, I intend that statement to be true every year.
Do check out the rest of The Greybeard’s articles on the changing nature of pension investing and retirement in the UK.
There was a lot of interest among Monevator readers about Lars Kroijer’s recent talk in London.
And plenty of you turned up on the night! But of course many of you couldn’t make it.
The good news is I’ve got a recording of the talk to share with you.
The bad news is the audio quality is somewhat terrible, and certainly not as good as Lars’ laconic delivery. It’s perfectly listenable though, provided you crank up the volume and wince a bit.
Here it is (sorry, no slides):
I really enjoyed the talk – and I suggest you listen to it all – but passive purists beware there’s far more about hedge funds than passive investing.
Here’s a quick guide to the contents:
- Start-27:30 – Lars explains how he got started in finance and hedge funds
- 27:30-46.00 – A bit about his life and strategies as a hedge fund manager
- 51:20-57.10 – Let’s talk about fees
- 57.10-1.01.00 – Why Lars says you should rationally own index funds
- 1.01.01-End – What about Smart Beta? Why one global tracker?
For more from Lars, check out his articles on Monevator or read his book, Investing Demystified
Good reads from around the Web.
The Budget was kinder to the typical Monevator reader than might have been expected, though you probably wouldn’t guess it from the frosty reception some of you have given to Lifetime ISAs…
But remember what we dreaded? The end of pension tax relief as we know it. Higher capital gains taxes. Maybe even lifetime restrictions for ISAs!
Then consider what we got.
For starters those pension reforms have been postponed again, and for now we have a carrot instead with Lifetime ISAs for the under-40s. (Surely not a coincidence?)
Meanwhile capital gains tax rates are to be cut, not raised, and everyone’s ISA allowance is headed up to £20,000.
It could have been a lot worse (and it was for some unfortunate people, as we’re seeing reflected in Cabinet rows this weekend).
Certainly there was nothing as horrific for me as the upcoming increase in dividend tax rates, which will likely cost me six-figures over the rest of my working life.
Lifetime ISAs – the missing link?
Treasury documents state the Lifetime ISA is still being finalized in conjunction with industry feedback, and to be honest I’m not surprised.
To me the Lifetime ISA looks like something that was left on the chopping block after the Chancellor threw away his more ambitious recipe for a radical overhaul of the pension system.
The 5% charge on taking money out before 60 – unless you use it to buy a house – is a big departure from the normal ease-of-access ISA ethos, and it smacks of a legacy of some sort of Pension ISA plan.
As for buying a home with the Lifetime ISA, that’s great – but it does make the Help to Buy ISA seem a bit redundant, since when you buy you can only put money from one of the two Government top-up ISA schemes to work.
Given the Help to Buy ISA has a maximum and fixed Government bonus – and it’s only received at the end, on buying – I’m surprised at this additional complication, versus just letting the two bonuses from each ISA scheme be lumped together.
The government could have reduce the maximum annual Lifetime ISA bonus to say £800 if allowing both together was really not affordable.
Then again, the writing is probably already on the wall for the Help to Buy ISA.
There will be a one-year window from 2017-2018 in which savers can move their Help to Buy ISA money into their Lifetime ISAs, which I imagine many people will want to do.
And by 2019 Help to Buy ISAs could be gone, anyway, as that was the furthest out the commitment to making them available was made.
Tallying the Budget
Perhaps the mixed reception is reflective of how fiddly the whole system has become. It’s hard to know if you’re a winner or a loser until you’ve spent a few hours studying the detail.
That’s hardly tax simplification, let alone socially cohesive policy making.
I remember when Budgets were boring, but in recent years they’ve had the same “It could be you!” drama of the National Lottery draw on a Saturday night.
Were you a winner? Here’s a roundup of the roundups:
- Budget 2016: How it affects you – Telegraph
- What the 2016 Budget means for you – Guardian
- How to benefit from the Budget changes – Telegraph
- BBC budget calculator – BBC
- Lifetime ISA: Four pros and two cons – Guardian
- Pension reform by carrot and stick – FIRE v London
- Budget tax implications for the very wealthy [Search result] – FT
- Merryin S-W: Wider benefits of lower CGT rates [Search result] – FT
- New £1,000 allowance for online entrepreneurs – This Is Money
- Web traders tax breaks explained – BBC
- As I’ve said before, personally I agree with I.D.S. on disability cuts – BBC
- In-depth analysis of the budget by tax experts, with comments [PDF] – CBW
Good reads from around the Web.
I haven’t agreed with everything written by Cullen Roche of Pragmatic Capitalism over the years – for me he doth protest too much when it comes to dissing passive investors who dare to call themselves that – but I have linked to him plenty of times.
The man undoubtedly knows his investing onions. And even when he sees onions and I see – um – fennel, I usually find his writing a tasty broth worth consuming.
(Mental note: Don’t blog on an empty stomach.)
Cullen has now written a research paper, and it’s basically an investing mini book that you can download for free as a PDF from the SSRN website.
It’s got a serious title – Understanding Modern Portfolio Construction – and it’s a serious read. But not a difficult one.
You say potato, I say passive investor
I think Cullen’s hostility towards the concept of passive investing (as opposed to using index funds and ETFs, which he fully endorses) is made more articulate within the context of this greater work.
He writes:
One of the dominant themes in asset allocation these days is the distinction between “active” and “passive” investing.
While this distinction was once quite clear it has become increasingly muddled in a world in which most asset allocators have become asset pickers using low fee index fund products instead of picking stocks.
After all, a stock picker can be quite “passive” (for example, Warren Buffet has a very low fee and inactive management style), however, the stock picker is not merely trying to capture broad market returns. They are trying to beat the market.
This means that the most useful distinction between “active” and “passive” is as follows:
- Active Investing – an asset allocation strategy with high relative frictions that attempts to “beat the market” return on a risk adjusted basis.
- Passive Investing – an asset allocation strategy with low relative frictions that attempts to take the market return on a risk adjusted basis.
This macro thinking highlights the fact that most asset allocators deviate from global cap weighting and are therefore indirectly engaging in an effort to “beat the market” in an active manner.
As Cliff Asness of AQR has noted, one cannot deviate from global market cap weighting and call themselves a “passive” investor.
I’m still not entirely on the same page, but as (some) active fund fees come down and cheaper dealing fees and robo advisers bring down the cost of owning stocks, too, I guess the argument is moving in his direction.
Anyway, download the PDF, have a read and see what you think. (It’s U.S. but relevant – just remember the tax comments don’t tally exactly with the UK).
Can you take the pressure when your portfolio is sinking faster than a sub with a leak? At what sorry depths does your brain implode and your stomach dissolve in an acid bath of its own stress?
That’s what risk tolerance hopes to tell you.
By staying on the right side of it, you’ll hopefully resist the urge to panic sell in a crisis as if you’re throwing small children in the way of an escaped lion that caught you pulling faces when you thought his cage was locked.
Knowing your risk tolerance helps guide your asset allocation so that you’re not over-committed to equities when the market drops.
But nobody’s born with an innate knowledge of their risk tolerance. You can take a test, but it doesn’t come with a reliability guarantee.
Also, ticking boxes on a questionnaire is an entirely different experience to coping with the emotional shock of confronting your first bear. 1
Bear market survivors
The surest test of your risk tolerance is how you reacted last time 20% or more was wiped off your wealth. (If that’s never happened to you then we have some helpful ideas in the next section).
Your first bear market raking represents hard won experience that you can put to good use:
- If you panicked and sold up then your asset allocation is too aggressive. You need to dial down your equities and dial up your bonds. Your risk tolerance is likely low or very low.
- If you felt worried but held your nerve without losing sleep then your risk tolerance is moderate and probably about right for that level of loss. You just need to consider a worse-case scenario (see the next section).
- If you rubbed your hands at the sight of securities on sale and rebalanced into the battered asset class then your risk tolerance is high. Consider a more aggressive position.
- Your risk tolerance is very high if, instead of praying for deliverance, you prayed for further falls so you could grab even better bargains.
Passive investing champion William Bernstein matches these reactions to the table below published in his brilliant book The Investor’s Manifesto
| Risk tolerance | Equity allocation adjustment |
| Very high | +20% |
| High | +10% |
| Moderate | 0% |
| Low | -10% |
| Very low | -20% |
The non-equity part of the portfolio is in intermediate or short duration domestic government bonds.
- Your bond allocation equals your age.
- Your equity allocation is then adjusted higher or lower by your bear market reaction as described above.
- A low-risk 30-year-old would be 60% in equities and 40% in bonds.
- A high-risk 60-year-old would go for a 50:50 portfolio.
Whatever you do, do nothing in the heat of the moment. You may feel like you’re being water-boarded while Donald Trump screams “LOSER!” in your ear but hang on. Sales during a storm can only crystallise losses.
Aim to gradually increase your bond holdings a few percent per year in line with the table above.
If your behaviour under fire suggests you can handle more adventure, then you can think about upping your equity position.
But again, only gradually.
Remain alive to the possibility that you may not feel so calm in the future if a bigger loss rips a chunk out of your bigger portfolio.
Bear market virgins
It’s better to be opt for an asset allocation that’s too conservative rather than too aggressive.
That’s because one of the worst things that can happen in investing is that you panic-sell, lock in losses, and swear off equities for good – missing strong returns in the future.
If you don’t have a real-life reference point to work from then assume your first big losses will feel much worse than you can predict.
A cautious approach enables you to build up your capabilities rather than having your confidence destroyed by an early trauma.
We’re generally advised to assume that equities can lose 50% of their value at any time.
The UK market’s biggest real 2 return loss was -71% from 1973 to 1974.
And it lost over 33% in 2008.
If you missed that debacle, try this:
- Write down the equity value of your portfolio.
- Halve it.
- How would you feel if that’s the amount you had in six month’s time?
- How would you feel if it took 10 years before your equity portion recovered its original value? Would you hate yourself? Would you feel stupid? Sick?
- If so, repeat again only this time you lost 25%. Then 20% and 10%.
- Can you cope if your portfolio doesn’t recover for 10 years?
- Dampen your portfolio with bonds or cash until you reach a position you can live with.
Prolific passive investing thinker Larry Swedroe
| Max loss you’ll tolerate | Max equity allocation |
| 5% | 20% |
| 10% | 30% |
| 15% | 40% |
| 20% | 50% |
| 25% | 60% |
| 30% | 70% |
| 35% | 80% |
| 40% | 90% |
| 50% | 100% |
The non-equity part of the portfolio is in intermediate or short duration domestic government bonds.
All this said, as a professional party-pooper, it’s my sad duty to mention that there’s no guarantee that bonds will actually save you in a market crisis.
A 50:50 portfolio of UK equities and bonds still went down -58% in 1973 to 1974.
Like flood defences or an asteroid-proof umbrella there is no way to defend against the very worst that can happen.
But all the same, you are much less likely to suffer unbearable losses with a large slug in UK government bonds.
Risk tolerance fine-tuning
Don’t assume that your risk tolerance is a fixed characteristic.
- How you feel when you’ve got £300,000 on the line may be different to when it was only £3,000.
- How you feel when you’re 60 may be different to when you’re 30.
- How you feel when you’re close to your goal may be different to when you’re 20 years away.
- How you feel under strain may be different to when the market is buoyant and everyone feels invincible.
Err on the side of caution and be honest with yourself about how you felt during dark times versus how you would liked to have felt.
Don’t take unnecessary risk even if you can handle the consequences. Once your goals are in reach there’s no point letting Mr Market knock them out of your grasp again.
Pare back your equity allocation to take risk off the table.
If you need all your capital back within the next five years then you shouldn’t be in equities. Do the 50% loss exercise and see how that looks.
Self-education can improve your risk tolerance to some degree. Many Monevator readers report taking comfort from their knowledge that major losses are commonplace.
History also tells us that we’re likely to recover our losses within a few years.
You just need to view investing as a long game.
Try horror-binging on a gory book of past stock market manias and crashes to understand the polar extremes that we’re likely to weather in the future.
It’s a lot easier to deal with a crisis once you realise it’s normal.
Take it steady,
The Accumulator
- A bear market is commonly considered to be a 20% fall from previous market highs.[↩]
- That is, inflation-adjusted[↩]
