Here Come the Suits
Close observers of the 'Bermuda Triangle' strategy weren't surprised when class action lawsuits were filed against AT&T, State Street Global Advisors and Lockheed Market for their choice of Athene...
Research
How do 401(k) participants save? Vanguard knows.
Vanguard released its 2022 edition of 'How America Saves,' a compendium of data on millions of Vanguard-administered 401(k) plan accounts. Of participants ages 65+, half had balances under $88k....
Who Has ‘Three Legs at Evening’? (The Elderly)
The Pension Research Council's Spring Symposium took place (virtually), which meant no semi-formal dinner with the sphinx at the University of Pennsylvania's museum. But the presentations of research papers...
Who snagged the best investment results in 2021? Dalbar knows
Dalbar founder Lou Harvey's latest Quantitative Analysis of Investor Behavior shows how much more equity investors might have earned in 2021 if they had stuck to the fundamentals. But...
It’s Inflation or Recession: Larry Summers
In this research roundup, economist Larry Summers predicts a recession next year. We also review new papers on annuitization habits of TIAA participants, 'tontines' for Chile, shortages of...
Target-date fund assets grow to $3.27T: Morningstar
Five providers control 79% of the target-date market: Vanguard, Fidelity, BlackRock, State Street, and American Funds, according to Morningstar's 2022 Target-Date Strategy Landscape report.
Research Roundup
Almost every controversial subject in the US today--from Fed policy to machine learning to immigration--contains an element or theme related to retirement policy. The articles reviewed in this month's Research...
Charting the Bitcoin Universe (and other New Research)
This Research Roundup offers a map of the world of cryptocurrency trading, a look at 'Participating Longevity-Linked Annuities,' an investing strategy for low-yield times from David Blanchett, and answers...
Research Roundup
This month we bring you scholarly articles on the Social Security 'tax torpedo,' the likelihood of needing long-term care, the best decumulation strategies from DC plans, the people most...
Retirement assets total $37.2 trillion in 2Q2021
Assets in IRAs totaled $13.2 trillion at the end of 2Q2021, up 5.4% from the end of 1Q2021. Defined contribution (DC) plan assets were $10.4 trillion at the end...
How The Elephant in the Room Evolved
In a new research paper, "The Evolution from Life Insurance to Financial Engineering," economists Ralph Koijen of Chicago Booth School and Motohiro Yogo of Princeton continue to describe what...
Diversification and Insurance: Which Should Come First?
'Diversification before insurance tends to perform better than insurance before diversification in the long run... but there are exceptions to this finding,' according to four analysts at Rand Merchant...
The Irony of Inflation Forecasting (Research Roundup)
In this month's roundup, we learn that CEOs pay little attention to inflation. We also find out why retirees keep saving, why "centaurs" pick stocks so well, which financial...
24 billion trades recorded on last January 27: Cerulli
The infamous short-squeeze craze of 2021, led by Millennial and Gen-Z investors on Reddit, led to an average of 15 billion trades per day executed in January 2021.
A Quick Way to Estimate Portfolio Longevity
Our guest columnist describes a simple tool that inputs historical market performance, a client’s account balances, her personal “sequence of returns” in the first five years of retirement, and...
The Fallen Angels of ‘Nomadland’
Many elderly poor in America have always been poor. But the elderly poor in 'Nomadland' seem relatively new to the game. We compare the people in the film to...
Research Roundup
Here's new research on tax avoidance among the very rich, the logic that millionaires use when buying equities, considerations for plan sponsors when estimating income from 401(k) balances, and...
Where investors put their money in February: Morningstar
ETFs collected roughly $92 billion, driven by a move into passive equity funds, while open-end mutual funds took in $53 billion, led by flows into actively managed fixed-income strategies,...
Comfort with CITs has grown: Cerulli
Driven by plan sponsors’ pursuit of lower-cost alternatives, CITs have captured marketshare from mutual funds, says the latest issue of The Cerulli Edge--US Monthly Product Trends report.
‘COVID-19 is not a retirement story’: CRR
'A hot topic these days is how COVID-19 and the ensuing recession have affected retirement. The surprising answer may be: Not very much,' write Alicia Munnell and Anqi Chen...
