Investors or Gamblers? by munificent Blog entry

Blog: Spirit of Money, Financial Fluidity
by munificent

Investors or Gamblers?

It is the only gamein town....And So It Is!

Date: 8/2/2005 9:28:50 AM ( 19 y ) ... viewed 1442 times

ADVICE: PERSONAL FINANCE
Financial pros show how to own the market
Dallas duo sets up index funds so Wall Street works for investor
By SCOTT BURNS
Universal Press Syndicate

As their book title, Wealth Without Worry, suggests, James Whiddon and Lance Alston are doing just fine, thanks.

So are their clients.

The two Dallas financial planners are the prime movers of JWA Financial Group, a small, fee-only financial planning firm. While most advisory firms promise careful security selection, unrelenting attention to economic events and high fees for their sublime foresight about future events, Whiddon and Alston march to a different drummer.

Their goal: a "market return portfolio," no more, no less.

In their book, they point out that a simple diversified index portfolio consisting of four basic index funds (20 percent S&P 500, 20 percent Russell 2000, 20 percent MSCI EAFE and 40 percent Lehman Intermediate Government indexes) would have returned 12.70 percent a year during the 25 years from 1979 through 2004.

That's a pretty good return.

Beating the best
How good? Try these examples. Dodge and Cox Balanced, a fund frequently mentioned in this column and now closed to new investors after years of stunning performance, clocked in at 11.40 percent over the same period. Vanguard Wellington, another top performer, returned 10.40 percent over the period. And Fidelity Puritan, another stalwart, returned 10.04 percent.

Basically, the index fund portfolio blew away the very best managed funds and did it with less risk. The index fund portfolio returned that 12.70 percent, while the S&P 500 was returning about 12 percent.

Whiddon and Alston, however, believe they can beat simple indexing by using institutional asset class index funds from Dimensional Fund Advisors, the Santa Monica, Calif., firm with deep academic roots in the research of Rex Sinquefield, Eugene Fama and Kenneth French. This research shows that it is possible to increase portfolio returns by investing in small-cap stocks and "value" stocks with low price-to-earnings and price-to-book value ratios.

The financial planners' 80:20 Market Return Portfolio consists of seven asset class funds, including small-cap, real estate and emerging market indexes. Only 20 percent is committed to fixed-income. While the simple index fund portfolio crushed the returns earned by active managers, the Whiddon/Alston model portfolio was returning a whopping 14.29 percent. And it did it with less market risk.

Three main reasons
How can this happen?

Whiddon attributes the superior performance to three factors: (1) relatively low costs, (2) asset class funds that contain more than 15,000 securities, compared with fewer than 4,000 securities for a typical index fund portfolio, and (3) such broad diversification that downside risk is muted.

During a recent interview, he called it "super-diversification." He said that, in practice, portfolios were constructed with 12 to 14 asset classes.

This is important.

One of the dramatic exercises in their book is a simple probability question: "What are the odds that an active manager can select a portfolio of funds that will do better than a portfolio of index funds?"

If only 30 percent of active fund managers beat the "U.S. large blend" index, 26 percent of the managers beat the "U.S. large value index," 39 percent beat the "U.S. small value index" and 29 percent beat the "large international index," the probability of a portfolio (or wrap account) manager picking index-beating funds is only 0.88 percent — less than 1 percent.

That, of course, doesn't mean that a managed portfolio can't beat an index portfolio. One outperformer can raise the overall average.

When I pointed this out to Alston, he had a quick response.

"With one-quarter of the portfolio in one asset class, you might have a chance to outperform with one good fund. But with 15 asset classes, it simply can't happen," he said.

In other words, the same major diversification that reduces portfolio risk also makes it a near mathematical certainty that a portfolio of managed asset classes will underperform a portfolio of indexed asset classes.

Playing against the house
Whiddon put it in broader terms: "The idea with the Market Return Portfolio is that you own the market. You own the entire casino. You own capitalism, which has been successful since it was created."

In managed investing, Wall Street owns the casino. And Wall Street invites us to play at their many tables. And "the house" always wins.

Questions about personal finance and investments may be sent to: SCOTT BURNS, P.O. Box 655237, Dallas, TX 75265; e-mail can be sent to scott@scottburns.com. Burns' Web page is http://www.scottburns.com.