After 2018’s roller coaster ride through the financial markets, the New Year presents an excellent opportunity to take stock of your retirement plan and maybe reallocate a resource or two. Portfolio managers commonly reallocate accounts by shifting investments based on both technical and fundamental indicators and retirement timelines. They do this throughout the year in an effort to find a prudent balance of safety and growth. But, a fresh year also offers inspiration to analyze your emotional resources and distribute them appropriately as well. If you haven’t taken a risk tolerance test in a while, now would be a good time to do that. Any investor’s ability to withstand market volatility can be affected by many variables including age, income level, budget, retirement timeline, personality and family situation. A person confident in his or her ability to absorb risk might view a steep market decline as a buying opportunity and a necessary correction of a healthy market, while another person might look at the exact same numbers and want to flee the equity market entirely in favor of cash and/or treasuries. The financial conundrum we all face is that both reactions could be correct. The age old admonishment to sell down to your sleeping point means a different alarm clock for every investor. Nervous investors with a strict retirement timetable tend to choose the slickest clock with the loudest alarm, while those who have a looser timeline and a mellower attitude might even sleep in. The point is, you have to ask yourself what type of investor you are. If volatility keeps you up at night and you’re willing to forego growth opportunities to lessen the likelihood of losing money, you may want to stick to cash or bonds. (Of course, with that choice you face another kind of risk, inflation, in which you could end up losing value in your accounts because they aren’t earning enough to keep up… | Read More »
Risk tolerance
How to risk well
The single most important thing you need to know about risk as you plan your retirement is that you can’t avoid it. The less risk you’re willing to take in the stock market, the more vulnerable you make yourself to inflation risk. If you overweight your portfolio to bonds because you want to avoid market risk, you end up facing business and interest rate risk. In general, the financial planning industry lists seven types of risks all investors face: default, business, liquidity, inflation, interest rate, political and market risks. Each risk affects the balance of your retirement portfolio, but you control the position of the fulcrum. We call that risk tolerance and we ask all clients and prospective clients to answer a series of questions to determine theirs. Most people find that their risk tolerance decreases as the get closer to retirement for both practical and emotional reasons. They have less time to make up for any sudden dips in the market and probably should shift assets onto more stable ground as they anticipate withdrawing from them Additionally, their sleeping level decreases as they become more hyper-focused on their accounts. Other factors influencing risk tolerance include major life changes like marriage, divorce, promotions, job loss, birth of children, inheritance, home purchase, caring for elderly parents, medical disability etc. Because these dramatic changes can have a profound effect on your risk tolerance, it is important to check your risk tolerance periodically, particularly after experiencing any of these events. According to Finametrica, the risk tolerance surveyor to which we subscribe, the first part of the process is determining how much risk is required for you to meet your goals: What annual return will you need on your investments to meet them, given what you think you can save? Next, figure out your risk capacity, which is different from your risk tolerance. Given your budget, retirement timeline and financial assets, how much risk… | Read More »