Do Top Performing Funds Persist?

Posted On February 27, 2017 By Scott Stratton, CFP(R), CFA In Portfolio Management /

How do you pick the funds for your 401(k)? I know a lot of people will look at the most recent performance chart and put their money into the funds with the best recent returns. After all, you’d want to be in the top funds, not the worst funds, right? You’d want to invest with the managers who have the most skill, based on their results.

We’ve all heard that “past performance is no guarantee of future results”, and yet our behavior often suggests that we actually believe the opposite: if a fund has out-performed for 1, 3, or 5 years, we believe it is due to manager skill and the fund is indeed more likely to continue to out-perform than other funds.

But is that true? Do better performing funds continue to stay at the top? We know the answer to this question, thanks to the people at S&P Dow Jones Indices, who twice a year publish their Persistence Scorecard (link).

Looking at the entire universe of actively managed mutual funds, they rank fund performance by quartiles, with the 1st quartile being the top performing 25% of funds, and the 4th quartile being the bottom 25% of funds.

Let’s consider the “Five Year Transition Matrix”, which ranks funds over five years and then follows how they perform in the subsequent five year period. For the most recent Persistence Scorecard, published in December 2016, this looks at funds’ five-year performance in September 2011, and then how they ranked five years later in September 2016.

Here’s how the top quartile of all domestic funds fared in the subsequent 5-year period:
20.09% remained in the top quartile
18.93% fell to the second quartile
20.56% fell to the third quartile
27.80% fell to the bottom quartile
10.75% were merged or liquidated, and did not exist five years later

The sad thing is that if you picked a fund in the top quartile, there was only a 20% chance that your fund remained in the top quartile for the next five years. But there was a more than 38% chance that your top performing fund became a worst performing fund or was shut down completely in the next five years.

Another interesting statistic: the percentage of large cap funds that stayed in the top half for five years in a row was 4.47%. If you simply did a coin flip, you’d expect this number to be 6.25%. The number of funds that stayed in the top half is slightly worse than random.

The Persistence Scorecard is a pretty big blow to the notion of picking a fund based on its past performance. And it’s significant evidence that we should not be making investment choices based on Morningstar ratings or advertisements touting funds which were top performers.

Should you do the opposite? I wish it was as simple as buying the bottom-performing funds, but they don’t fare any better. Funds in the bottom quartile had a similarly random distribution into the other three quartiles, but had a much higher chance of being merged or liquidated.

There are a couple of possible explanations for funds’ lack of persistence:

Styles can go out of favor; a “value” manager may out-perform in one period and not the following period. Hence a seemingly perpetual rotation of leaders.
Successful managers may attract large amounts of capital, making them less agile and less likely to out-perform.
There may be more randomness and luck to managers’ returns, rather than skill, than they would like to have us believe.

Unfortunately, the S&P data shows that for whatever reason, there is little evidence for persistence. Investors need a more sophisticated investment approach than picking the funds which had the best performance. The Persistence Scorecard highlights why performance chasing doesn’t work for investors: yesterday’s winners are often tomorrow’s losers.

What to do then? We focus on creating a target asset allocation, using a core of low-cost, tax efficient index ETFs and a satellite component of assets with attractive fundamentals. What we don’t do is change funds every year because another fund performed better than ours. That kind of activity has the potential for being highly damaging to your long-term returns.

I hope you will take the time to read the Persistence Scorecard. It will give you actual data to understand better why we say past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Diversification and Regret

Posted On February 6, 2017 By Scott Stratton, CFP(R), CFA In Behavioral Finance, Portfolio Management / 1 Comment

Diversification is one of the key principles of portfolio management. It can reduce idiosyncratic risks of individual stocks or sectors and can give a smoother performance trajectory, or as financial analysts prefer to say, a “superior risk-adjusted return” over time. Everyone sees the wisdom of not putting all your eggs in one basket, but the reality is that diversification can sometimes be frustrating, too.

Being diversified means holding many different types of investments: stocks and bonds, domestic and international stocks, large cap and small cap, traditional and alternative assets. Not all of those assets are going to perform well at the same time. This leads to a behavioral phenomenon called Tracking Error Regret, which some investors may be feeling today.

When their portfolio lags a popular benchmark, such as the Dow Jones Industrials or the S&P 500, Investors often regret being diversified and think that they should get out of their poorly performing funds and concentrate in those funds which have done better. (Learn about the benchmarks we use here.)

It’s understandable to want to boost performance, but we have to remember that past performance is no guarantee of future results. Many people receive a snapshot from their 401(k) listing their available funds with columns showing annualized performance. Consider these two funds:

	3-year	5-year	10-year	Expense Ratio
S&P 500 ETF (SPY)	11.10%	13.55%	6.88%	0.10%
Emerging Markets ETF (VWO)	2.83%	-0.07%	2.24%	0.15%

Source: Morningstar, as of 2/06/2017

Looking at the performance, there is a clear hands-down winner, right? And if you have owned the Emerging Markets fund, wouldn’t you want to switch to the “better” fund?

These types of charts are so dangerous to investors because they reinforce Performance Chasing and for diversified investors, cause Tracking Error Regret. Instead of looking backwards at what worked over the past 10 years, let’s look at the Fundamentals, at how much these stocks cost today. The same two funds:

	Price/Earnings	Price/Book	Dividend Yield	Cash Flow Growth
S&P 500 ETF (SPY)	18.66	2.65	2.21%	0.33%
Emerging Markets ETF (VWO)	12.34	1.51	3.37%	5.09%

Source: Morningstar, as of 2/06/2017

Now this chart tells a very different story. Emerging Market Stocks (EM) cost about one-third less than US stocks, based on earnings or book value. EM has a 50% higher dividend yield and these companies are growing their cash flow by 5% a year, versus only 0.33% a year for US companies.

I look at the fundamentals when determining portfolio weightings, not past performance. If you only looked at the performance chart, you’d miss seeing that EM stocks are cheap today and US stocks are more expensive. That is no guarantee that EM will beat the S&P 500 over the next 12 months, but it is a pretty good reason to stay diversified and not think that today’s winners are bound to continue their streak forever.

Performance chasing often means buying something which has become expensive, frequently near the top. That’s why I almost never recommend sector funds or single country funds (think Biotech or Korea); the investment decision is too often based on recent performance and those types of funds tend to make us less diversified rather than more diversified.

Staying diversified means that you will own some positions which are not performing as well as others in your portfolio. When the S&P 500 is having a great year, a diversified portfolio often lags that benchmark. But, when the S&P 500 is down 37% like it was in 2008, you may be glad that you own some bonds and other assets.

We use broadly diversified ETFs and mutual funds, with a willingness to rebalance and buy those positions when they are down. We have a value bent to our weightings and are willing to own assets like Emerging Markets, even if they haven’t been among the top performers in recent years. Staying diversified and focusing on the long-term plan means that you have to ignore Tracking Error Regret and Performance Chasing. Just remember that you can’t drive a car forward by looking in the rear-view mirror.

Gifts, Rights, and Duties

Posted On January 23, 2017 By Scott Stratton, CFP(R), CFA In Financial Planning /

What does Good Life Wealth Management stand for? Financial Planning is both an Art and Science, and while we dutifully toil on numbers, it is all in service to loftier goals and ambitions. Investment strategy is the one of the outcomes of our Financial Planning process, but it is certainly not the most important part.

We want to begin with an understanding and appreciation of three things in your life: Gifts, Rights, and Duties. When these are clear in your mind, your relationship with money has purpose.

Gifts certainly include inherited wealth, but we should all recognize how fortunate we truly are to be alive in 2017. I live in a vibrant city in the fastest growing state in the most prosperous country in the world. I was blessed to be born in a good zip code and attend great schools with the support and love of a wonderful family.

I attended two private universities, institutions which did not just spring from the ground, but were gifts to the future from people who were incredibly generous, insightful, and industrious. And some 175 years later, many thousands have benefited from those university founders.

Today, we have the gift of modern medicine, technology, cars, and the internet. And our wealth is invariably derived from all these gifts. It may still take a lot of our own blood, sweat, and tears, but no one in America is 100 percent self-made.

Rights include our constitutional protections of life, liberty, and private property. The ability to achieve financial freedom is an impossible dream – still – in many parts of the world. And while it is easy for me as a white male to take these rights for granted, for many other Americans, those rights did not exist in the not so distant past.

Duty is a recognition of our moral obligations. We have a duty to protect and provide for our spouse, children, and family. We have a duty to our self to plan for retirement and a secure future. We have a duty, I think, to leave the world a better place, and to help the next generation, just as our predecessors built schools and industries and fought for the rights which we enjoy today.

My vision of financial planning does not begin with choosing the “right” mutual fund or ETF. It is rather a holistic strategy to create a roadmap to your goals, as determined by your Gifts, Rights, and Duties.

– If we are to value our money, we must begin with the humility to recognize that most of our success is a gift. We won the life lottery and that 90% of who we are was luck and 10% was through our efforts. (Even intelligence, good health, and a strong work ethic are gifts, not something we earned!)

– We should not take our rights for granted. While there are fundamental rights, financial planning is to make sure you navigate your other smaller rights, such as to tax deductions, a 401(k), a Roth IRA, or Estate Plan. We want to make sure our clients take advantage of the benefits which are available to them.

– Duty to others means that we can take care of ourselves first and foremost. But it also means that we have prepared for the unexpected. That’s why I am perplexed by young families who want my help with investments, but want to skip over estate planning, college funding, or life insurance. That’s not fulfilling your duty as a parent and spouse.

There are two types of happiness: pleasure and fulfillment. Pleasure is easy: it is going to the beach and doing nothing, enjoying a glass of wine, or celebrating with friends. It is basically hedonistic. While we all need to rest and recharge from time to time, many retirees become bored after three months of golfing every day. Pleasure is not the highest form of satisfaction.

Fulfillment is having a purpose and making a difference. In Maslov’s hierarchy of needs, the highest need is achieving self-actualization, or realizing your full potential. The Good Life, is not about seeking pleasure, but finding fulfillment and purpose. While our financial planning software can crunch the numbers, our conversations are really about How do we use our gifts? What are our rights? How can we best fulfill our duty to others and make a difference? If that is the starting point for our relationship with money, we can have a more meaningful perspective on our goals, values, and impact on the world.

Forget 2017, Think Longer

Posted On December 26, 2016 By Scott Stratton, CFP(R), CFA In Behavioral Finance /

A few weeks ago, I brought my car to the dealership for some routine maintenance and they gave me a brand new 2017 model as a loaner for the day. As part of the car’s “infotainment system”, you could enter stock tickers and get price quotes right there on the screen of the car.

Aside from the obvious danger of distracted driving, does the outcome of my retirement plan actually hinge on having this information available 24-7? Will I be wealthier if make trades from my phone while stuck in rush-hour traffic?

Unfortunately, increasing our access to information does not guarantee we can use that information profitably. In fact, I believe that the more we focus on short-term issues, the more we endanger the long-term outcomes. Be careful of missing the forest for the trees.

The field of behavioral finance has identified many seemingly innate, but irrational, behaviors which can be hazardous to our wealth. The more information we have, the more frequently we are compelled to “do something” in terms of our investment allocation. Unfortunately, the more investors trade, the worse they do, on average, because of these behavioral tendencies.

Here are four behavioral patterns which can become a problem for all investors:

1) Overconfidence
The more information we have, the more strongly we believe that we can predict the outcome. Closely related is confirmation bias, which is where we place more weight on information which supports our existing point of view, and tend to ignore evidence which is contrary.

2) Disposition Effect
Many investors are willing to sell their winning trades but are very reluctant to sell their losing positions. “The loss isn’t real until you sell – it has to come back eventually!” What we should do is to ignore what we paid for a position and look objectively at how we expect it to perform going forward. If there are better opportunities elsewhere, we should not hold on to losers.

3) Home Bias
Investors prefer to invest in domestic companies, when left to their own devices. They miss the benefits of investing globally. See How a Benchmark Can Reduce Home Bias.

4) Naive Diversification
If a 401(k) plan offers five choices, many investors will simply put 20% into each of the five funds, regardless of category or their own risk tolerance. I’ve also seen portfolios that have multiple holdings in the same category, most often US Large Cap. When the market drops, having seven large cap funds will not offer any more defense than having one fund.

I mention these behavioral faults because you are inevitably going to see many articles over the next two weeks predicting what is likely to occur in the year ahead. Reading these is a waste of your time. The reality is that no one has a crystal ball and can predict the future.

Forecasters’ abilities to predict the stock market has been so poor and inconsistent, that if you actually look at a large number of past predictions, you will immediately recognize that their investment value is non-existent. There is often a great deal of group think and a Bullish bias from firms who get paid to manage investments. Others seem to be permanently Bearish, but still get press coverage in spite of being wrong for years at a time.

The good news is that you don’t have to know what 2017 has in store to accomplish your long-term goals. We need to think bigger than just one year at a time, so here’s a reminder of what we do:

Create a financial plan to lay out the steps to achieve your long-term goals.
Invest in a disciplined, diversified asset allocation based on your needs, risk tolerance, and risk capacity.
Pay attention to risks, taxes, and our returns.
Monitor, adjust, and rebalance to stay on course.

The more we allow short-term noise to dictate our long-term investment strategy, the greater risk we are to our own success. If your car offers stock quotes, may I suggest you instead set it to weather or sports? Your portfolio will thank you for it.

Boost Confidence, Improve Your Finances

Posted On April 18, 2016 By Admin In Behavioral Finance /

Which comes first, confidence or success? I believe that in most facets of life, confidence is a prerequisite for success. This is true whether you are a business executive, athlete, musician, teacher, or any other profession. Of course, there is a virtuous cycle where success reinforces confidence, but it has to begin with confidence in the first place.

Five Things To Do When The Market Is Down

Posted On February 15, 2016 By Admin In Behavioral Finance, Portfolio Management /

When the market is down, it hurts to look at your portfolio and see your account values dropping. And when we experience pain, we feel the need to do something. Unfortunately, the knee-jerk reaction to sell everything almost always ends up being the wrong move, a fact which although obvious in hindsight, is nevertheless a very tempting idea when we feel panicked.

Even when we know that market cycles are an inevitable part of being a long-term investor, it is still frustrating to just sit there and not do anything when we have a drop. What should you do when the market is down? Most of the time, the best answer is to do nothing. However, if you are looking for ways to capitalize on the current downturn, here are five things you can do today.

1) Put cash to work. The market is on sale, so if you have cash on the sidelines, I wouldn’t hesitate to make some purchases. Stick with high quality, low-cost ETFs or mutual funds, and avoid taking a flyer on individual stocks. If you’ve been waiting to fund your IRA contributions for 2015 or 2016, do it now. Continue to dollar cost average in your 401k or other automatic investment account.

2) If you are fully invested, rebalance now; sell some of your fixed income and use the proceeds to buy more stocks to get back to your target asset allocation. Of course, most investors who do it themselves don’t have a target allocation, which is their first mistake. If you don’t have a pre-determined asset allocation, now is a good time to diversify.

3) Harvest losses. In your taxable account, look for positions with losses and exchange those for a different ETF in the same category. For example, if you have a loss on a small cap mutual fund, you could sell it to harvest the loss, and immediately replace it with a different small cap ETF or fund.

By doing an immediate swap, you maintain your overall allocation and remain invested for any subsequent rally. The loss you generate can be used to offset any capital gains distributions that may occur later in the year. If the realized losses exceed your gains for the year, you can apply $3,000 of the losses against ordinary income, and the remaining unused losses will carry forward to future years indefinitely. My favorite thing about harvesting losses: being able to use long-term losses (taxed at 15%) to offset short-term gains (taxed as ordinary income, which could be as high as 43.4%).

4) Trade your under-performing, high expense mutual funds for a low cost ETF. This is a great time to clean up your portfolio. I often see individual investors who have 8, 10, or more different mutual funds, but when we look at them, they’re all US large cap funds. That’s not diversification, that’s being a fund collector! While you are getting rid of the dogs in your portfolio, make sure you are going into a truly diversified, global allocation.

5) Roth Conversion. If positions in your IRA are down significantly, and you plan to hold on to them, consider converting those assets to a Roth IRA. That means paying tax on the conversion amount today, but once in the Roth, all future growth and distributions will be tax-free. For example, if you had $10,000 invested in a stock, and it has dropped to $6,000, you could convert the IRA position to a Roth, pay taxes on the $6,000, and then it will be in a tax-free account.

Before making a Roth Conversion, talk with your financial planner and CPA to make sure you understand all the tax ramifications that will apply to your individual situation. I am not necessarily recommending everyone do a Roth Conversion, but if you want to do one, the best time is when the market is down.

What many investors say to me is that they don’t want to do anything right now, because if they hold on, those positions might come back. If they don’t sell, the loss isn’t real. This is a cognitive trap, called “loss aversion”. Investors are much more willing to sell stocks that have a gain than stocks that are at a loss. And unfortunately, this mindset can prevent investors from efficiently managing their assets.

Hopefully, now, you will realize that there are ways to help your portfolio when the market is down, through putting cash to work, rebalancing, harvesting losses for tax purposes, upgrading your funds to low-cost ETFs, or doing a Roth Conversion. Remember that market volatility creates opportunities. It may be painful to see losses today, but experiencing the ups and downs of the market cycle is an inevitable part of being a long-term investor.

The Investor and Market Fluctuations

Posted On January 18, 2016 By Admin In Behavioral Finance, Portfolio Management /

In 1934, Benjamin Graham first published his treatise “The Intelligent Investor”. Graham is considered by many to be the father of Value Investing and was a teacher of Warren Buffett. He wrote about the difference between investing and speculating, and devoted a whole chapter to “The Investor and Market Fluctuations.” I can do no better than to share this excerpt and to note that his advice is as true today as it was 80 years ago.

“The most realistic distinction between the investor and the speculator is found in their attitude toward stock-market movements. The speculator’s primary interest lies in anticipating and profiting from market fluctuations. The investor’s primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices. Market movements are important to him in a practical sense, because they alternately create low price levels at which he would be wise to buy and high prices at which he certainly should refrain from buying and probably would be wise to sell.

It is far from certain that the typical investor should regularly hold off buying until low market levels appear, because this may involve a long wait, very likely the loss of income, and the possible missing of investment opportunities. On the whole it may be better for the investor to do his stock buying whenever he has money to put in stocks…

Aside from forecasting the movements of the general market, much effort and ability are directed on Wall Street toward selecting stocks or industrial groups that in matter of price will “do better” than the rest over a fairly short period in the future. Logical as this endeavor may seem, we do not believe it is suited to the needs or temperament of the true investor… As in all other activities that emphasize price movements first and underlying values second, the work of many intelligent minds constantly engaged in this field tends to be self-neutralizing and self-defeating over the years.

The investor with a portfolio of sound stocks should expect their prices to fluctuate and should neither be concerned by sizable declines nor become excited by sizable advances.”*

As much as markets have changed over the past century, what has not changed is human nature. That’s why Graham’s advice to never sell a stock just because it has gone down remains so relevant today. Be an investor and not a speculator; don’t think that you can predict what stock prices are going to do next. If you’re in it for the long-term, use market volatility as an opportunity to put money to work.

*The Intelligent Investor, Benjamin Graham, `Revised Edition, 2006, pp. 205-206.

The Psychology of Volatility

Posted On January 11, 2016 By Admin In Behavioral Finance /

We’ve had a rough start to 2016, with stocks dropping across the board. Today, we are within a couple of percentage points of retesting the lows of last August. You can’t pick up a newspaper or tune into a business show on TV without being bombarded with the “reasons” why the market is down.

The key to success for investors, I would argue, is not in understanding the economy, interest rates, or corporate earnings. Rather, it is knowing what to do in volatile times.

There are two types of losses: a temporary drop and a permanent loss. Enron was a permanent loss. Single securities (stocks or bonds) can go to zero, and this does happen from time to time, especially in high risk situations. However, if you are investing in a diversified fund, such as the Russell 1000 Index ETF, the impact of a single stock going bankrupt is very, very small.

Volatility is the reality that security prices do not move up in a straight line, but fluctuate up and down over the short to medium term. The challenge is that it is difficult for our brain to distinguish between a temporary drop (market volatility) and a permanent loss.

The anxiety from a loss can cause not just emotional stress, but actually trigger a physical response in our body chemistry. The evolutionary response to danger is to flee, which for investors, means the strong urge to get out of the market, protect our capital, and stop the pain we are experiencing.

Unfortunately, selling during a period of market volatility has the tragic consequence of turning a temporary drop into a permanent loss. Most investors under perform the overall market precisely because they sell during times of stress. It is essential to recognize that market volatility is just a temporary drop for a long-term investor and be willing to stay the course during these periods.

Here’s how we can use this behavioral understanding to our benefit:

1) Many investors would say that the past 15 years have been horrible in the stock market. The reality is not so bad; if you had invested in the S&P 500 Index ETF (SPY), you would have had a 4.97% annualized return over this period. That equates to a 107% total return, a little more than a double. That’s better than most would assume, because the agony of the losses we’ve experienced is much more intense and memorable than the gains we have actually received. This phenomenon is called loss aversion.

2) If we reframe market volatility as “opportunity” rather than “danger”, then we can profit by being willing to buy when the market is down. People love buying their holiday presents when stores have a 20% sale, but when the market drops 20%, no one wants to invest. If you view a drop as a great chance to buy stocks on sale, then you will realize that the past 15 years have given investors incredible opportunities to profit. And while we shouldn’t try to time the market, we can dollar cost average by making regular contributions to our accounts to take advantage of volatility.

3) We have each client complete a risk tolerance questionnaire before investing. Our goal is to choose an asset allocation which we can stick with, through the inevitable ups and downs that will follow. It’s easy to be aggressive when the market is moving up, but it’s better to invest with an understanding of how you will feel when the market does have a correction.

4) Many investors will create a long-term investment strategy and then proceed to evaluate their portfolio performance on a very frequent basis, such as monthly, daily, or even hourly. The more often you look at your portfolio, the more often you will be tempted by the thought of “Don’t just sit there, do something!” This is where we have to recognize that the emotional, physical urge to react is at odds with the rational process of sticking to a plan. If you want to act in a long-term manner, you cannot think in terms of short-term results. For many of us, it is better to look at your accounts less often, rather than more often.

No matter what you’re feeling about the current market volatility, remember that I am just a phone call away and happy to listen to your concerns, talk strategy, and share the opportunities available in today’s market.

Data from Morningstar, as of 12/31/2015

The Benefits of an Older Car

Posted On November 30, 2015 By Admin In Behavioral Finance /

The average car on the road today is 11.5 years old today, according to USA Today. Today’s cars are more dependable and long-lasting than ever and yet for many consumers, transportation remains their second largest expense after their home.

Last November, I purchased a used car, and not the typical 2-3 year old gently used vehicle, but a 2002 Toyota 4Runner with 179,097 miles. I wanted a larger vehicle to transport my three big dogs and wanted something I wouldn’t worry about getting muddy or scratched.

Admittedly, I have been leery of older cars. What if they break down? The last thing anyone wants is to have unexpected large expenses trying to keep a dying vehicle on the road. And I especially do not want to have an unreliable or unsafe vehicle when it is 102 degrees in July or 20 degrees in January.

Well, I’ve lived with my old car for a year now and will give you a full report, including a breakdown of all my costs. I drove the car almost every day and put just over 11,000 miles on this year (the photo is my current odometer reading: 190,182 miles). During that time, it has been 100% reliable (knock on wood…). The car has always started and worked perfectly. I have had zero breakdowns and no unplanned maintenance.

As a student of behavioral finance, I think people’s car buying choices are interesting to study. Most of us buy what we want, but then create a rationalization that sounds good for why we “need” a new car. Oftentimes, it’s really about projecting an image of success or trying to fit in with others in the office, neighborhood, or group of friends.

Many people prefer a new car, under warranty, to avoid the unpleasantness of having to pay for car repairs. This is known as “loss aversion”, which means that the pain of a $500 loss is much more intense and memorable than the satisfaction of a $500 gain.

Getting a new car every three years may cost $400 or $500 a month regardless of whether you lease, finance, or pay cash. With an older car, your depreciation can be very small, and instead your main expense is typically maintenance. You may end up spending $800 twice a year in repairs and upkeep. That sounds terrible, but which costs more: $400 a month, or $800 twice a year?

Having a used car may leave you on the hook for unplanned repairs, but the chances are good that those repairs will be a small fraction of the ongoing cost of getting a new car every three years. It’s loss aversion that makes $1,600 a year in unplanned repairs feel much worse than the fact that you might save $400 a month ($4,800 a year) by not having a car payment.

I paid $4,500 for my Toyota, and had to pay $316.75 in sales tax and registration fees. My biggest expense for the year was for a set of four new tires, $744.84. I did all the work on the car myself, including three oil changes, replacing the rusty radiator, hoses, and thermostat. I changed the fluids, including brake, transmission, power steering, and differential oil. I installed a new air filter, PCV Valve, and wipers, and cleaned the intake twice. In total, I spent $521.23 on maintenance, which was quite low since I did the work myself.

According to Kelly Blue Book, the current value of my vehicle is $4,044, so my estimated depreciation for the year was $456. Including depreciation, my cost for the year was $2038, which works out to 18.4 cents per mile (not including fuel). My insurance cost was much lower with this car; I kept the same high level of liability coverage as my other vehicles, but dropped collision. The annual insurance premium was $510.40, less than half the cost of our other vehicles.

What are the takeaways from this experience? A couple of thoughts:

A well-maintained vehicle can certainly last 150,000 miles or more. Your best choice is always to keep your current vehicle for as long as possible and remember that even if you spend a couple of thousand on repairs per year, that is a small amount compared to the costs of depreciation associated with the first 5 years of a new cars’ life.
Buying a used car is always going to be a bit of a gamble. Do your homework and choose a vehicle known for its dependability and ease of repair. Keep up with routine maintenance, using the manufacturer’s recommended schedule. Get to know a trustworthy independent mechanic.
I know that keeping a car for 10 years is a great idea, but for me, I just get bored with a vehicle after a couple of years and want something different. Knowing this preference, I can buy a used car every couple of years and not have the staggering depreciation costs of new vehicles.
It’s okay to spend money on cars, but if you think that retirement, paying down debt, saving for college, or growing your net worth are more important, than you need to make sure to prioritize those goals ahead of new cars. Every financial planner has met lots of people who have a new Mercedes but who “can’t afford” to contribute $5,000 a year into an IRA. Make sure your spending reflects your values and goals, and is not based on what you want others to think.

How a Benchmark Can Reduce Home Bias

Posted On October 26, 2015 By Admin In Portfolio Management / 2 Comments

Home Bias is the tendency for investors to prefer, and greatly overweight, the stocks of their local, domestic companies to the detriment of their portfolio’s performance. If you lived in Sweden, where local equities comprise only 1% or so of the world’s equity markets, and still had most of your money in “domestic” stocks, you’d obviously be missing out on a great deal of opportunities and diversification.

From our vantage point here in the United States, the local Swedish investor is likely losing out by only investing locally. As obvious as that example appears to us, many US investors do the same thing. Today, US stocks comprise only half of the value of equities worldwide and represent only 25% of the total number of stocks. Both figures are likely to drop significantly in the decades ahead as foreign populations, economies, and stock markets grow at a pace much faster than here in America.

50 years ago, or even 25 years ago, it was difficult to invest in international equities, so investors stuck with local stocks out of necessity. Today it is as easy to invest in foreign stocks or bonds as it is to invest in domestic securities, and yet many investors still have little or no weighting in foreign holdings in their portfolios.

By allowing their Home Bias to persist, investors miss out on the benefits of diversification. Fidelity published a study this August, looking at US versus Foreign stock performance from 1950 through 2014. Over this period, US stocks had an annualized return of 11.3%, slightly ahead of the foreign stock return of 10.9%. Since foreign stocks lagged US stocks, you might think that adding them to a portfolio would make your return worse. Remarkably, that isn’t the case: a portfolio of 70% US / 30% Foreign equities produced a return of 11.4% over this period.

Adding foreign stocks improved returns because of diversification and rebalancing – when US stocks are down, foreign stocks may be up, or vice versa. In addition to increasing returns, the 70/30 mix also reduced volatility (standard deviation) from 14.4% to 13.1%. The Fidelity study is a great example of how diversification can help investors improve returns and lower risk at the same time. People who think that foreign stocks are riskier than US stocks aren’t looking at the bigger picture of what happens when you combine both types of stocks into one portfolio.

In recent years, US Stocks have performed well and as a result, carry a higher valuation today than Developed Market or Emerging Market stocks. If you are concerned about shifting some of your US funds to an international fund that has a worse 5-year track record, you may be placing too much weight on past performance – looking backward – rather than looking forward. The lower valuations found today in foreign stocks are a positive sign that there are opportunities for growth there. That’s no guarantee of what those stocks will do in the short-term, but generally, I think this is a smart time to be shifting from US to foreign stocks if you are underweight on the foreign side.

One of the ways we try to remove the behavioral “safety blanket” of familiar domestic equities, is through our benchmark. We run five portfolio models here at Good Life Wealth Management. Our benchmark for equities is the MSCI All-Country World Index (ACWI), and for a global portfolio that is a more appropriate benchmark than a US-only index like the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, or the NASDAQ composite. The ACWI is currently 52% US Stocks and 48% Foreign stocks. I’m not saying that everyone needs to be invested in exactly that percentage (52/48), but by using the ACWI as a benchmark, we have the best measure of the performance of global equities. Then we can look at our own performance and see if the segment weightings we have selected were able to add value or not.

The internet has revolutionized business and today we truly have a world economy. It’s time that investors lose their Home Bias so they don’t miss out on the benefits of diversification. Using the All-Country World Index as our benchmark is a good way to start thinking globally in terms of our opportunities and how we create a portfolio.