Risky Business Update: Challenges Remain for Today’s Investors
A Callan analysis found that investors in 2015 needed to take on three times as much risk as they did 20 years before to earn the same expected return. We recently updated our analysis and found that investors in 2019 needed to take on almost six times as much risk as they did 30 years ago
Equity Risk Looms Large for Fund Sponsors
The median fund sponsor in Callan’s database gained 2.7% in the third quarter. Taft-Hartley plans (+3.0%) were the best-performing sponsor by type, as they were the previous quarter; corporate plans (+2.3%) showed the lowest increase.
Untangling the Gordian Knot of ‘Cash Drag’
Modern portfolios are increasingly complicated as they have expanded beyond stocks and bonds. The management of those portfolios—and the attendant illiquidity that can come with alternative investments—has many asset owners staring at a Gordian knot very much in need of untangling. With Alexandrian efficiency, a futures-based cash overlay can slice through many of the issues complicating cash […]
Non-U.S. Bias Rewarded Plans in 2017
Endowments/foundations (+3.8%) performed best last quarter, followed by public plans (+3.7%), Taft-Hartley plans (+3.6%), and corporate plans (+3.5%). For all funds, the return was +3.7%, according to Callan’s database. Plans with assets below $100 million performed best by fund size, up 3.7%, compared to 3.6% for both medium plans ($100 million-$1 billion) and large plans. […]
Managing Risk While Hunting for Returns
Low interest rates and low return expectations continued to drive strategic allocation discussions for fund sponsors. Many felt compelled to take on market risk to reach return targets. Sponsors are now examining if there is anything they can do to tamp down the risk within their large growth allocation short of actually reducing it. For […]
Many Plans Risk Up for Returns
View PDF Fund sponsors are beginning to come to grips with lower capital market return expectations. Pension funds are reducing actuarial return assumptions, and endowments and foundations are discussing and making adjustments to spending rules. Some funds are addressing this issue by taking on substantial market risk (80%-85% in risky assets) to attempt to close […]
No Homefield Advantage for Fund Sponsors
View PDF A post-election rally, higher interest rates, and political uncertainty in Europe and Asia left global markets unfazed as stocks and bonds rallied. Both U.S. and non-U.S. stocks delivered stellar returns in the first three months of 2017. That put some juice into the performance of institutional funds tracked by Callan, which did far […]
No-Nonsense Guide to White Label Funds
“White label” funds are investment structures built using a mix of underlying funds to provide a simple but rich multi-manager exposure to an asset class. Their intuitive labeling (i.e., “Company XYZ Small Cap Fund”) is designed to help participants easily understand the role of a specific fund in a portfolio. White label structures also help […]
Risky Business
Download PDF Interest rates are historically low in the U.S. and abroad. Couple this with modest growth, and fund sponsors reluctant to lower return expectations face one of the most difficult investing environments in history. To find out how difficult, our experts wondered, “What would an investor need to do to achieve a 7.5% return […]