Susan M. Mangiero's  Instablog

Some states such as North Carolina are legislating more choices for state retirement funds. According to "Pension fund to get new options" by The News & Observer reporter David Ranii, the Tar Heel State Treasurer will soon have the ability to allocate to junk bonds and Treasury Inflation Protected Securities ("TIPS").

In "Asset allocation survey 2009," Mercer LLC queried European pension funds and uncovered a "continuing focus on risk management and recognition that good governance can improve the investment performance of institutional investors." Notable is the result that mature defined benefit plans tend to reduce their exposure to equity markets in favor of fixed income.

In contrast, Dr. David Gulley, Managing Director at Navigant Consulting, suggests that an exit from equity could be ill-advised for investors seeking returns over many years. In "A Surprising Bear Market Lesson About Bullish Projections" (Law360, July 2009), Dr. Gulley writes that "a substantial and objective body of evidence shows that equity returns are reliable in the long term" and that a positive equity risk premium is "actually a requirement enforced by the market's ability to deny money." If true, the impact is potentially sweeping. For one thing, a migration to Liability-Driven Investing ("LDI") which tends to favor fixed income might prove costly later on. Pension plan decision-makers seeking to reallocate away from long only strategies might incur transaction costs now, only to add opportunity cost to the mix if and/or when the sun rises again in stock land. The net result could be a doubling up of bad news bears (or worse).

Absent a universal acceptance about the role of stocks versus everything else, the debate about optimal strategic and tactical asset allocation mix will no doubt continue for many years to come.