Target-Date Funds Are Cruise Control Of Investing

Target-date, or life cycle, funds are the cruise control of investing. After you choose which fund to invest in, the fund does all the work for you. You don’t have to think about it again until retirement.

Many target-date mutual funds are funds of funds. They hold a selection of equity funds, such as large-cap, small-cap and international funds, and a selection of fixed-income funds of multiple durations and yields.

The appeal of target-date funds is that they take care of all the asset allocation and rebalancing for you. It’s a balancing act of managing market risk, inflation risk and longevity risk.

Typically, an investor picks a target date around the time he plans to retire. When the investor is young, the fund focuses on growth and mostly holds stock funds. But as the investor gets closer to retirement, the fund’s asset allocation becomes more conservative and focuses on fixed income. The changing asset allocation is called the glide path.

Target-date funds hit the public consciousness after the Pension Protection Act of 2006. The legislation allowed 401(k) plan sponsors to make life cycle funds the default investments for participants who didn’t choose their own funds. The logic was that since investors were now in charge of their own retirement funds, sitting in cash wasn’t going to get them there.

“For the past nine years that we’ve been keeping track, there has been double-digit growth in assets, ever since Pension Protection came out,” said Janet Yang, Morningstar’s target-date fund analyst.
In 2006, of all the 401(k) plans, 57 offered target-date funds. In 2012 the number had jumped to 72, according to the Investment Company Institute.

In 2006, only 19% of 401(k) plan participants held target-date funds. Six years later it was 41%. Also, in 2006 target-date funds made up only 5% of 401(k) assets. By 2012 that had jumped to 15%.
By the end of Q2 2012, target-date mutual funds held $678 billion, said Sarah Holden, the ICI’s senior director of retirement and investor research. The majority of those assets were held in retirement accounts. Defined contribution plans held 68% of the total, and individual retirement accounts 20%. The rest was in the personal accounts of investors looking for the glide path approach.
Vanguard, Fidelity and T. Rowe Price have the largest target-date funds.

Families of target-date funds can have different philosophies, which can lead to wide dispersions in the holdings, returns and fees for funds with the same target year. Recently, fees have become a big issue, and that has helped move plan sponsors toward index-based funds.

“Each client’s needs are going to be different,” said Don Wilson, chief investment officer at BrightWorth, an Atlanta asset manager. “Some target-date funds will be too risky, while others won’t be risky enough.”

Wilson said that if the investor picks his 65th birthday as the target date, he may have 20 years of retirement ahead of him. He may need to have more equities to help his account grow and outpace inflation. The target-date fund may not be taking this into account.

The only ETF provider with target-date portfolios now is Deutsche X-trackers.

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Hennessy Funds Outperform With Active Management

More than 70% of actively managed U.S. stock funds lagged their benchmarks over the five years ended June 30, according to the S&P Dow Jones Indices Versus Active (SPIVA) U.S. scorecard.

Hennessy Funds were an exception. Over those five years, nearly 70% of Hennessy’s funds beat their benchmark on an annualized basis.

The SPIVA U.S. scorecard measures performance of actively managed funds against their relevant S&P index in the stock market.

“The past five years (through June 30) have been marked by the rare combination of a remarkable rebound in domestic equity markets and a low-volatility equity environment,” Aye Soe, senior director, Index Research & Design, S&P Dow Jones Indices, wrote in the SPIVA report. Soe added, “This combination has proven difficult for domestic equity managers… across all capitalization and style categories.”

Among U.S. equity funds, 60% of large-cap, 58% of midcap and 73% of small-cap managers underperformed their benchmarks, according to SPIVA.

Managers of international equity fared worse. About 70% of global equity funds, 75% of foreign equity funds, 81% of foreign small-cap funds and 65% of emerging market funds lagged their benchmarks.

Yet of Hennessy Advisors’ 16 funds, which run $5.7 billion, six outperformed their indices for the 12 months ended June 30.

On a five-year annualized basis, 11 funds beat their benchmarks net of fees. Six of the 11 turned over their portfolios just once a year.

“It’s not timing the market, it’s your time in the market,” said Neil Hennessy, the firm’s president, chairman and chief investment officer. “We buy the stocks with a highly disciplined formula, and we hold for a year with no emotions. Then we do it again.”

The two best performers are Hennessy Japan Fund and Hennessy Japan Small Cap Fund.

Over the 12 months that ended June 30, the small-cap fund gained 28.68% vs. the Russell/Nomura Small Cap Index’s 17.21%, says Morningstar. Over the past five years, the fund’s annualized return of 15.13% beat the index’s 9.87% .

The Japan Fund’s 17.54% gain over the past year beat the Russell/Nomura Total Market Index’s 10.86% gain. The fund’s 14.40% five-year average annual return topped the index’s 7.48%.

Among U.S. equity funds, Hennessy Cornerstone Mid Cap 30 gained the most over the 12-month period. Its 31.95% outperformed the Russell MidCap Index’s 26.85%. On a five-year annualized basis, the fund returned 22.32%, beating the index’s 22.07%.

Hennessy Cornerstone Large Growth rose 29.35% over the 12 months ended June 30, exceeding the Russell 1000 Index’s 25.35%. Its five-year average annual return of 19.48% beat the index’s 19.25%.
Hennessy’s best funds over the five years held bonds and stocks. Hennessy Total Return Fund, at 75% equity and 25% bonds, beat the 75/25 Blended DJIA/Treasury Index 15.19% vs. 13.41% on an annualized basis.

Hennessy Core Bond’s 5.42% return outpaced the Barclays U.S. Government/Credit Intermediate Index’s 4.09%.

As for volatility, over the past five years each outperformer beat its bogey four years; the Mid Cap 30 outperformed just three years.

For the full story go to Investor’s Business Daily.