Jonathan Clements's Blog, page 440

New Stats, Old Story

DISCUSSING AMERICA’S RETIREMENT readiness is almost always dispiriting. A minority are in good shape, but most folks are just muddling along—and many aren’t even managing that. Here are some numbers from the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s 2016 Retirement Confidence Survey:

26% of workers say they have $100,000 or more in savings, excluding their home and any defined benefit pension. But the same percentage—26%—say they have less than $1,000. The picture is cheerier if you look at workers age 55 and older, but not that much cheerier: 45% report $100,000 or more in savings, but an alarming 17% have less than $1,000. Keep in mind that even $100,000 will generate just $4,000 in first-year retirement income, assuming a 4% withdrawal rate.Among workers currently contributing to a 401(k) or similar employer retirement plan, 23% say they have taken out a loan. Paying off debt and buying a home were the top two reasons cited. What happened to their plan balance when they left their last employer? The EBRI study found that 25% of workers spent the money or used it to pay down debt.Our expectations, it seems, are a tad optimistic. For instance, workers plan to retire at age 65, on average. But many are forced to leave the workforce earlier than expected, so the actual retirement age is 62. Similarly, among workers, 67% expect to work for pay once they’re retired, but only 27% of retirees report doing so. And don’t assume retirement will be cheap: 38% of retirees say their expenses in retirement have turned out to be higher than expected, while just 21% say their cost of living has proven to be lower.

Control What You Can

ASK NOT WHAT the markets can do for you. Ask what you can do for your portfolio.

After 15 turbulent months for stocks, many folks feel they’re at the mercy of the financial markets. But in truth, we’re far from powerless. We may not be able to control the direction of share prices. But here are seven crucial financial levers over which we have a lot of control:

1. We can figure out how much cash we’ll need from our portfolio over the next five years, and then shift this sum into short-term bonds and cash investments. That way, we know we’re in great shape for the next five years, no matter how crazy the markets get.

2. We can increase our earned income, reducing our reliance on our portfolio. The bigger our paycheck, the less need we’ll have for investment gains, which is why even retirees may want to work part-time.

3. We can cut our spending, which also reduces our need to take money from our portfolio. Reducing spending is one of the great financial levers—and yet it’s given scant attention. My advice: Keep your fixed costs low—we’re talking expenses like mortgage or rent, car payments and insurance premiums—so you can easily trim your spending if the markets go against you.

4. We can keep more of whatever the market delivers, by holding down our investment costs, making full use of retirement accounts and holding tax-efficient investments in our taxable account.

5. We can take advantage of lower stock prices by saving more and by rebalancing our portfolio.

6. We can reduce our exposure to the markets by exploiting one of our great financial advantages—our eventual mortality. The federal government will pay us handsomely to delay Social Security, while insurers offer hefty income to retirees who purchase immediate-fixed annuities. We might live off our savings in our early retirement years, while delaying Social Security to age 66 or even age 70. If we want additional guaranteed lifetime income, we might consider an income annuity.

7. We can choose to do nothing. Market turmoil often scares folks into action. But keeping our trading to a minimum is often the smarter strategy.

A Fistful of Trouble

CONFRONTED BY A COMPLICATED financial world, the temptation is to fall back on rules of thumb. But are these rules any good? Here are five of the most popular:

1. Save 10% every year. There are two knocks on this rule of thumb. First, the 10% of pretax income is the sum you’re meant to save for retirement—which means those who have other goals, like buying a house and paying for a child’s college education, need to save even more. Second, even if your only goal is retirement, you probably ought to be saving 12% to 15%, given today's modest bond yields and heady stock market valuations. And if you don’t start saving for retirement until after age 35, you likely need to save a whole lot more than 15%.

2. Buy life insurance equal to five to seven times income. This is probably the most dubious rule listed here. If you’re single with nobody who depends on you financially, you likely don’t need life insurance. If you have three young kids and not much in savings, you might need twice as much coverage as this rule suggests—and possibly far more.

3. Set aside emergency money equal to six months of living expenses. If your job is tenuous, this isn’t a bad benchmark. But for those with more secure jobs, a spouse who works or access to a home-equity line of credit, an emergency fund equal to three months’ living expenses might suffice.

4. In retirement, you need 80% of your final salary. This is a tough threshold to hit. The good news: You’ll probably be just fine if—between Social Security, any pension income and portfolio withdrawals—you manage 50% to 60% of your preretirement income. Why? Once retired, the mortgage might be paid off, the kids have moved out and you don’t have to pay Social Security payroll taxes. Most important, you no longer need to save for retirement. Lots of folks make a big push to save in their final years in the workforce, notching a savings rate of 20% or more, so they’re already used to living on far less than their full income.

5. Limit your retirement withdrawal rate to 4%. The idea is to withdraw 4% of your portfolio’s value in the first year of retirement and thereafter increase your annual withdrawals with inflation. Studies have found that, historically, this would allow retirees to make it through a 30-year retirement without running out of money.

Lately, the 4% withdrawal rate has been criticized as too generous in a world where stocks and bonds are so richly valued. That may be true. Still, advocating anything less is unrealistic, because people simply couldn’t afford to retire. My advice: Start at 4% or even 5%—but stand ready to slash your spending if the markets go against you.

A World of My Making

WRITING MAY PROVIDE ME with a livelihood—but it also provides me with an escape. Whenever there’s a ruckus in some other part of my life, it can be comforting to power up the computer and spend a few hours wrestling with my latest article or book. Each piece is a world entirely of my making, where I’m fully in charge. Like a puzzle, I can move the sentences and paragraphs around, until I’m happy with the flow of the words, the tone seems right and the argument hangs together.

As readers peruse the result, I wonder whether they realize what a one-sided discussion we’re having. If there’s an inconvenient fact, I can ignore it. If there’s something I’m unsure of, I can dance around it. When I write, I don’t aim to be unfair, and yet that is the inevitable result.

All this has been on my mind as I finish up my latest book, How to Think About Money, which will be out in September. The book describes how I’ve come to view money, including the connection to happiness, the implications of increasing life expectancy, the central role of our human capital, and more. I hope to change the way readers tackle their financial life. It’s an effort at persuasion, where I present the world as I see it. Readers may disagree. They could leave the rest of the book unread or send me a blistering email. But they can’t quibble with me mid-book, because I always get the next word—and the one after that and the one after that.

Not So Pure

THE LATEST MUTUAL FUND SCORECARD from S&P Dow Jones Indices had sobering news for buyers of actively managed funds: Just 17% of U.S. stock funds beat the broad market over the past 10 years. But for those who dug into the numbers, there seemed to be a glimmer of hope.

The so-called SPIVA scorecard analyzes actively managed U.S. stock funds in 13 style boxes. There are four categories for value funds, four for growth funds and four for funds that straddle these two investment styles. In each case, the four categories focus on the size of company bought: small-cap, mid-cap, large-cap and multi-cap. Thus, the SPIVA scorecard looks at small-cap growth funds, mid-cap growth funds, large-cap growth funds and so on. In addition, there’s a 13th category, devoted to real estate funds.

The failure to beat the market is flabbergasting. In 11 of the 13 categories, less than a fifth of funds managed to beat their benchmark index over the past 10 years. The worst category was large-cap growth funds, where just 6% of funds outperformed their category’s benchmark.

The best performers were large-cap value funds: 39% of these funds outperformed their benchmark index. Are value managers smarter? Is there hope for buyers of actively managed funds? I wouldn’t count on it.

At issue is a statistical quirk. Funds are almost never as pure in their investment style as the index they’re judged against. That hurts actively managed funds when their part of the market is relatively hot. Funds will often buy stocks from outside their stated area of investment focus—and these stocks will tend to drag down performance, relative to the fund’s benchmark index, when the benchmark index is on a hot streak. Conversely, when their benchmark index has weak performance, active funds often appear to be relatively strong performers, as their results get a boost from the stocks they own from outside their main investment mandate.

Sure enough, over the past 10 years, the S&P 500 Growth index was up 8.7% a year, while the S&P 500 Value index was up 5.8%. Result? If large-cap value managers snuck a few growth stocks into their portfolio, it would have helped their performance—and made them look good relative to the value index.

Tobin's Q

THE FEDERAL RESERVE just released its latest “Financial Accounts of the United States”—which sent nerdy stock market analysts scrambling to look at table B. 103, which details the “Balance Sheet of Nonfinancial Corporate Business,” and especially line 44. That line compares the stock market’s overall value to the current value of assets owned by corporations. Some of these corporate assets are listed at their market price, while others are valued at their replacement cost.

In the latest Fed release, which reflects data for 2015’s fourth quarter, stocks were at 95% of the value of corporate assets. This is known as Tobin’s Q, named after famed economist James Tobin, who first proposed the measure. At first blush, the current reading suggests U.S. shares are cheap, because stock investors can effectively purchase corporations at a 5% discount to the value of their assets.

Analysts, however, don’t pay much attention to the absolute number, because the replacement values are likely overstated (or, to put it another way, companies could replace their current assets with assets of comparable condition for less than the stated replacement cost). Instead, analysts pay attention to how today’s ratio compares to the historical ratio. On that score, things don’t look so good: The latest reading of 95% is well above the historical average of 68%, which tells us that stocks are most likely overvalued. For a chart of Tobin’s Q over time, head to AdvisorPerspectives.com.

None of this means that stocks are about to crash. Tobin’s Q shouldn’t be used as a short-term trading signal. Indeed, based on Tobin’s Q, stocks have been overvalued for much of the past quarter century, suggesting that perhaps average valuations have moved into a permanently higher range. If that has happened, it’s a mixed blessing, as I have emphasized before: We may not get a big market decline—but, given today’s rich valuations, we also aren’t likely to enjoy impressive long-run gains.

Four Big Questions

MY MARCH NEWSLETTER went out this afternoon to folks on my email distribution list--and I also just posted a copy to this site. The newsletter discusses four key questions that stock market investors need to wrestle with. It also describes an intriguing approach to retirement income, where you start by explicitly deciding how much longevity risk you're willing to take. 

The $686 Million Man

EXXONMOBIL RECENTLY ANNOUNCED 2015 earnings of $16.2 billion, just half of 2014’s level. That news sent me scurrying around the Internet in search of a decade-old article I vaguely recalled.

At year-end 2005, Lee R. Raymond retired as ExxonMobil’s chairman and chief executive after 13 years at the helm. The following April, The New York Times reported that Raymond earned $686 million during that stretch, equal to $144,573 a day. The article noted that, during his tenure, ExxonMobil’s net income had soared from $4.8 billion in 1992 to $36.1 billion in 2005. But it also noted that “some corporate governance experts argue that much of Mr. Raymond's pay came from easy profits generated by skyrocketing oil prices,” which roughly tripled during that 13-year stretch.

Unfair criticism? Consider what’s happened since. After Raymond’s retirement, ExxonMobil’s net income continued to climb, hitting a peak of $45.2 billion in 2008. Earnings have been choppy since, falling to $19.3 billion in 2009 and recovering to $44.9 billion in 2012, just below 2008’s lofty level. It’s been downhill ever since, as evidenced by 2015’s grim results.

Here’s a not-so-surprising insight: The trajectory of ExxonMobil’s net income pretty closely mirrors the trajectory of oil prices. Oil peaked in mid-2008, nosedived from there through early 2009, recovered in the years that followed and then collapsed again beginning mid-2014.

On Wall Street, investors are told, “don’t confuse brains with a bull market.” Maybe compensation committees at natural resources companies need a similar mantra: “Don’t confuse CEO brilliance with booming commodity prices.”

We the People, We the Problem

WHY IS THE U.S. ECONOMY growing so slowly? Should we bar new immigrants—and toss out some of those already here? Can we afford today’s Social Security retirement benefits? These three huge public policy issues might seem unrelated, but they are connected by two demographic realities: The workforce is growing too slowly—and the retiree population is growing too quickly.

Over the next decade, the U.S. civilian workforce is projected to grow at 0.5% a year, versus a 50-year average of 1.5%. Meanwhile, we currently have 3.9 adults age 20 to 64 for every person 65 and older. That’s down from 4.8 to 1 in 2005—and the ratio is projected to hit 2.7 to 1 in 2030. Consider the implications:

The U.S. economy has grown at an inflation-adjusted 2.9% a year over the past 50 years, with half of that growth coming from increasing the number of workers and the other half from increasing the productivity of workers. If the workforce is expanding at 0.5% a year, rather than at 1.5%, economic growth will inevitably be slower, unless we can somehow engineer an astonishing increase in productivity.One way to increase the number of workers is to increase immigration. I’ll leave others to debate whether that would be good for society or fair to existing workers. But the economic benefit is pretty clear: We would increase the number of workers and hence speed up economic growth.People often discuss Social Security as though it’s a federal budget issue. But the budget issue is just a symptom of a larger economic problem: Can those who remain in the workforce produce enough goods and services to provide not only for themselves, but also for their children and for our rapidly growing retiree population? It seems doubtful. That means we need to find some way to encourage folks to stay in the workforce beyond age 65, while also encouraging employers to keep these workers on. If we manage that feat, the budget problem would likely go away, thanks to the income taxes collected from a growing army of older workers. 

Consider the Consequences

WITH STOCKS IN TURMOIL, investors are once again fretting over risk. But what aspect of risk should we worry about? Whenever the notion arises, it’s worth contemplating three questions.

What are the odds of success or failure? Over the past 50 years, the S&P 500 (with dividends reinvested) has lost money in 11 calendar years, equal to once every four or five years. With odds like that, an occasional losing year should be no great surprise. The implication: Stocks may be a fine long-run investment, but they’re a risky venture for anyone who has a short investment time horizon—or a short emotional time horizon.

Keep in mind that, during this 50-year stretch, we had one three-year losing streak (2000-02), as well as a two-year drubbing (1973-74). Thus, it might be more accurate to say that, over the past 50 years, we’ve had eight periods of market unpleasantness—a few of them extremely unpleasant. This count excludes 1987, when the S&P 500 managed to lose more than 20% in a single day, and yet still posted a gain for the year.

What are the consequences? This is the most important of the three questions. If you don’t need to sell stocks any time soon and you aren’t given to panic, the consequences of a market decline are hardly worth contemplating. In fact, it could prove to be a bonanza if you take the opportunity to buy more. On the other hand, if you do need to sell stocks in the near future or you are given to panic, the consequences of a market decline could be severe and it might make sense to dial back your portfolio’s risk level, even though the S&P 500 is already down 14%.

What’s uncertain? While risk can be measured, uncertainty can’t be. For instance, I don't know how you would calculate the odds that the U.S. tax code will be rewritten so that stocks become more or less attractive. Could corporate tax rates be cut? Could capital-gains taxes rise? Both are clearly possibilities, though it’s hard to say how significant those possibilities are.

Indeed, I’m not sure how useful it is to contemplate uncertainty, except to acknowledge that bad stuff could happen—including bad stuff that isn’t even on our radar screen. That should make us a tad more humble in our investment choices, so we think long and hard before straying too far from a globally diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds.