Category: Investment

In our last blog we looked at why an active rebalancing policy is essential and why is balance so important?  Now we will consider why an unbalanced portfolio is more risky and how it works.  Let now continue.

Why is an unbalanced portfolio more risky?

Seduced by high returns, an investment manager might be tempted to leave a portfolio of high-performing shares or equity funds to grow. The problem is that they may also end up dangerously exposed. The results can be both painful and swift.

Perhaps the most traumatic illustration was in 1974, when the FTSE All-Share Index fell by more than 70% – very bad news for anyone holding a UK share portfolio. Black Monday in October 1987 wasn’t that great either: by the end of the month, the US Dow Jones Industrial Average was down by 22% and the UK market was off by 26%. In 2008, the year when the credit crunch kicked in, the FTSE 100 index fell by 31%. And bonds can suffer too: in 1994 unexpected interest rate rises by the US Federal Reserve helped to wipe a cool $1.5 trillion from world bond markets. It is true that markets do come back from such losses, but it often requires a strong stomach to last the journey. For an investor, not having all your eggs in one basket can both protect wealth and give the confidence to stay aboard.

How does rebalancing work?

The main rebalancing approaches are either “periodic”, based on set time intervals such as every quarter, or when differences in performance cause the asset allocation to drift away from its target by more than a certain percentage. This is known as “band” or “range” rebalancing. To see how these strategies affect long-term returns, they tested the 60/40 portfolio over the nearly 80-year period since 1940 using different rebalancing strategies and none at all. (This was the longest set of reliable data they could find.)

They tested nine rebalancing portfolios and one with none, our “drift” portfolio. In terms of absolute returns, the drift portfolio performed best, with a 10% annual return. However in risk-adjusted terms, which they defined as annualised returns divided by annualised volatility, it performed the worst. Indeed, every portfolio which used a rebalancing policy, be it periodic or range based, outperformed the drift portfolio in risk-adjusted terms (see chart).

Doesn’t regular rebalancing incur costs?

It is true that regularly buying and selling assets is a more costly strategy than leaving a portfolio alone. As well as commissions paid to brokers, the typical spread between selling and buying prices also works against the frequent trader.

For the purposes of illustration, they have ignored such costs, but they acknowledge that they can be substantial enough to outweigh the benefits of rebalancing. Choosing the optimum rebalancing strategy therefore involves a trade-off between the best risk-adjusted returns and the lowest level of costs consistent with achieving those returns.

Is rebalancing just an automatic process?

In short, no. Our research shows clearly that, while a rebalancing strategy should follow set rules, it also necessarily requires judgement. Not only do investment managers have to decide whether to rebalance or not, but also how frequently, the target allocation and the way the strategy should be implemented, among other things. Having the expertise to time rebalancing strategies based on economic environments can be difficult, but experience suggests that having such a policy in place should help greatly during times of market stress.

 They conclude that, even when markets are doing well, rebalancing produces superior risk-adjusted returns compared with doing nothing.

As an integral part of the investment process, rebalancing should therefore bring rigour and discipline to the construction of the portfolio, while providing free long-run risk management. This is a combination that should commend itself to all, allowing everyone to sleep that bit easier at night.

Why an active rebalancing policy is essential to achieve and retain healthy long-term returns for clients

As an adviser, it can be hard to hold your nerve when making investment recommendations on behalf of clients. Share price gyrations, sudden market drops and fear of missing out can unsettle the steeliest investor. Such tribulations can undermine the discipline needed for long-term gain and to retain the returns clients need to enable them to meet their goals in life.

Of course, diversification is key. By ensuring that clients have a portfolio consisting of a range of different asset classes and sectors, you can increase the odds that at least one of them will be working hard when the others aren’t. But maintaining the necessary diversity of assets is not something that can be left to chance. Research suggests that keeping the right balance between the different assets over time is an important factor often overlooked when it comes to investment management.

Why is balance so important?

Risk is as important as return or, as billionaire investor Warren Buffett put it, “Rule number 1: never lose money. Rule number 2: never forget rule number 1.” Getting the right balance between risk and reward is not easy. Attaining good “risk-adjusted” returns means maintaining the right proportion of those assets that provide growth, balanced against the right proportion that will provide security. Asset allocation is the biggest influence on a portfolio’s risk and return.

What happens when there is no rebalancing?

An essential part of maintaining a diversified portfolio is to carry out regular rebalancing – ie the regular adjustment of a portfolio so that it keeps returning to the original asset allocation. Say equities make up 75% of a portfolio but then have a good run while other assets languish. That equities portion may end up making up 80% of the portfolio. By rebalancing, you sell until the equities are back to a 75% portion.

You end up selling assets that have performed well and buying ones that haven’t – a prudent move in itself – which helps guard against portfolio drift.

One well known Company recently carried out an exercise to find out how rebalancing, and not rebalancing, would have affected outcomes – the returns achieved versus the risks taken. They used one of the simplest of diversified portfolios split 60% in shares – to provide the growth – and 40% in bonds – to provide the security. While an investment portfolio might start with this division, stockmarket movements mean that it will almost certainly move away from the original “60/40” allocation. They looked at how it would have fared in two 10-year periods,1990-2000 and 2000-2010, with no intervention. They found that a 60/40 portfolio in 1990 would have ended up divided 75/25 by 2000. On the other hand, a 60/40 allocation in 2000 would have become 45% equities and 55% bonds by the end of the decade. In both cases, the better-performing asset class came to dominate the portfolio. That may have worked well in terms of returns, but it would have shifted the risks drastically compared to the original asset allocation.

In our next blog we will consider why an unbalanced portfolio is more risky and how it works.

A leading Investment House sent me an email today which I thought would be of interest.  As they say, unless you’ve been living under a rock, Brexit, and turmoil within Theresa May’s cabinet, has dominated most news feeds this week. Looking past all the noise, nothing much has changed yet. A deal has finally been outlined but it remains to be seen whether it will even get through parliament. It’s still a mess and the outcome is unclear.

Outside all the UK, other market remain volatile.

• Another tough week for crude oil saw it down 17% over the last month. It wasn’t too long ago that a large fall had major economic and market implications around the world. We don’t think a repeat is likely but it does have implications for global asset prices such as government bonds, high yield and emerging markets
• US equities remain volatile. There are many reasons for this but this week saw profit warnings from suppliers of Apple. That’s right, not Apple itself but its suppliers. While the strong tech performance, the so-called FANGs, could continue for a while, the volatility was a reminder of the S&P’s reliance on a narrow range of stocks.

The UK is just a small part of a big world and they, like other Investment Houses we use, say they will continue to pay close attention to markets all over the world to help protect against downside risks and exploit growth opportunities within globally diversified portfolios.