Anup K. Basu

Dynamic Lifecycle Strategies for Target DateRetirement Funds

Lifecycle funds offered to retirement plan participants gradually reduce exposure to stocks as the funds approach the target date of the participants’ retirement.The authors show that such deterministic switching rules produce inferior wealth outcomes for the investor compared to strategies that dynamically alter the allocation between growth and conservative assets based on cumulative portfolio performance relative to a set target.The dynamic allocation strategies proposed in this article exhibit almost stochastic dominance over strategies that unidirectionally switch assets without consideration of portfolio performance.

The appropriateness of default investment options in defined contribution plans: Australian evidence

For participants in defined contribution (DC) plans who refrain from exercising investment choice, plan contributions are invested following the default investment option of their respective plans. Since default investment options of different plans vary widely in terms of their benchmark asset allocation, the most important determinant of investment performance, participants enrolled in these options face significantly different wealth outcomes at retirement. This paper simulates the terminal wealth outcomes under different static asset allocation strategies to evaluate their relative appeal as default investment choice in DC plans. We find that strategies with low or moderate allocation to stocks are consistently outperformed in terms of upside potential of exceeding the participants wealth accumulation target at retirement as well as downside risk of falling below that target outcome by aggressive strategies whose allocation to stocks approach 100%. The risk of extremely adverse wealth outcomes for plan participants also does not appear to be very sensitive to asset allocation. Our evidence suggests the appropriateness of strategies heavily tilted towards stocks to be nominated as default investment options in DC plans unless plan providers emphasize predictability of wealth outcomes over adequacy of retirement wealth.

Does Fundamental Indexation Lead to Better Risk‐Adjusted Returns? New Evidence from Australian Securities Exchange

Fundamental indexing based on accounting valuation has drawn significant interest from academics and practitioners in recent times as an alternative to capitalization weighted indexing based on market valuation. This paper investigates the claims of superiority of fundamental indexation strategy by using data for Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) listed stocks between 1985 and 2010. Not only do our results strongly support the outperformance claims observed in other geographical markets, we find that the excess returns from fundamental indexation in Australian market are actually much higher. The fundamental indexation strategy does underperform during strong bull markets although this effect diminishes with longer time horizons. On a rolling five years basis, the fundamental index always outperforms the capitalization-weighted index. Contrary to many previous studies, our results show that superior performance of fundamental indexation could not be attributed to value, size, or momentum effects. Overall, the findings indicate that fundamental indexation could offer potential outperformance of traditional indexation based on market capitalization even after adjusting for the former’s slightly higher turnover and transaction costs.

The Case for Gender-Sensitive Superannuation Plan Design

A key feature of superannuation plan design is the assumption that members have long and continuous periods of employment over which contributions are made. This heroic design feature has led to debate on the adequacy of superannuation plans for those with interrupted employment, particularly the adverse impacts this has on the retirement income prospects of women. This paper employs non-parametric stochastic simulation to investigate two possible solutions to gender inequality in superannuation, higher contribution rates and more aggressive asset allocation. Our results suggest that while both these strategies in isolation are effective in reducing the current gender disparity in superannuation outcomes, they demand significant changes to current arrangements when employed individually to address the problem. A combined approach is found to be more powerful in ensuring a more equitable superannuation outcome for women, as it nullifies the relative disadvantage of interrupted employment with only modest changes to contribution rates and asset allocation.

The value of tail risk hedging in defined contribution plans: what does history tell us

Hedging against tail events in equity markets has been forcefully advocated in the aftermath of recent global financial crisis. Whether this is beneficial to long horizon investors like employees enrolled in defined contribution (DC) plans, however, has been subject to criticism. We conduct historical simulation since 1928 to examine the effectiveness of active and passive tail risk hedging using out of money put options for hypothetical equity portfolios of DC plan participants with 20 years to retirement. Our findings show that the cost of tail hedging exceeds the benefits for a majority of the plan participants during the sample period. However, for a significant number of simulations, hedging result in superior outcomes relative to an unhedged position. Active tail hedging is more effective when employees confront several panic-driven periods characterized by short and sharp market swings in the equity markets over the investment horizon. Passive hedging, on the other hand, proves beneficial when they encounter an extremely rare event like the Great Depression as equity markets go into deep and prolonged decline.

Asset Allocation in Retirement: Does Glide Path Matter?

We compare the performance of the commonly nominated default retirement investment option, the lifecycle fund, to alternative investment strategies during retirees’ decumulation phase. Under different shortfall risk measures, we find balanced portfolios with constant exposure to equities, equity dominated portfolios as well as ‘reverse lifecycle’ portfolios that increase exposures to equities over time to consistently outperform the conventional lifecycle portfolio. While an increasing equity glidepath improves the performance of an investment strategy, the starting asset allocations are equally important. Using a utility-of-terminal wealth approach which allows for loss aversion as discussed in prospect theory by Kahneman and Tversky (1979), we find the Growth portfolio to dominate the alternative strategies at low and moderate thresholds. With increasing wealth threshold levels, a strategy with all equity allocations becomes dominant. The lifecycle portfolio is dominated by the ‘reverse lifecycle’ portfolio at all threshold levels.

The Predictive Ability of P/E Ratio: Evidence from Australia and New Zealand

We find negative relationship between historical price-earnings (P/E) ratio and following year’s stock returns in Australia and New Zealand. The existence of P/E effect is consistent with prior research in US market but the effect seems to be stronger and short-lived. Whilst the excess returns of low P/E stocks are not explained by the market risk factor, they are not significant after controlling for size, value, and momentum. We also find evidence of a positive relationship between P/E ratio and the following year’s earnings growth that suggests that investors are generally good at assessing relative earnings growth prospect of companies.

Embedded Tax Liabilities and Portfolio Choice

Taxes play an important role in determining after-tax investment risk and returns, but many practitioners still make investment decisions based on pre-tax values. The apparent complexity of dealing with deferred capital gains and the question of how these implied future tax liabilities should be valued are central to this problem. The authors use a simple arbitrage argument to show that a risk-free discount rate is appropriate for calculating the present value of future tax liabilities. This lets analysts adjust risk and returns for effective tax rates and present a more accurate picture to the investor. The results show a taxation-induced preference for holding equities over bonds and a location preference for holding equities in a taxable account and bonds in retirement accounts. These important findings contrast with traditional investment advice that suggests a greater capacity for risk in retirement accounts.

The Value of Tail Risk Hedging in Defined Contribution Plans: What Does History Tell Us

Hedging against tail events has been forcefully advocated in the aftermath of recent global financial crisis. Whether this is beneficial to long horizon investors like defined contribution (DC) plan participants, however, has been subject to criticism. We conduct historical simulation since 1928 to examine the effectiveness of active and passive tail risk hedging using OTM put options for hypothetical DC plan investors with 20 years to retirement. Our findings show that the cost of tail hedging exceeds the benefits for a majority of investors during the sample period. However, for a significant number of simulations, hedging result in superior outcomes relative to an unhedged position. Active hedging proves beneficial when investors confront several panic-driven periods characterized by short and sharp market swings over the investment horizon. Passive hedging, on the other hand, only dominates when investors encounter an extremely rare event like the Great Depression when markets go into deep and prolonged decline.