Question

I don't have a specific example, but this was provided on a study guide:

For a portfolio with three assets, determine the allocation needed to have a portfolio yielding the market return.

How would I go about determining the weights if I know the return?

Answer 1

In its simplest terms, asset allocation is the practice of dividing resources among different categories such as stocks, bonds, mutual funds, investment partnerships, real estate, cash equivalents, and private equity. The theory is that the investor can lessen risk because each asset class has a different correlation to the others; when stocks rise, for example, bonds often fall. At a time when the stock market begins to fall, real estate may begin generating above-average returns.

The amount of an investor’s total portfolio placed in each class is determined by an asset allocation model. These models are designed to reflect the personal goals and risk tolerance of the investor. Furthermore, individual asset classes can be sub-divided into sectors (for example, if the asset allocation model calls for 40% of the total portfolio to be invested in stocks, the portfolio manager may recommend different allocations within the field of stocks, such as recommending a certain percentage in large-cap, mid-cap, banking, manufacturing, etc.)

Model Determined by Need
Although decades of history have conclusively proved it is more profitable to be an owner of corporate America (viz., stocks), rather than a lender to it (viz., bonds), there are times when equities are unattractive compared to other asset classes (think late-1999 when stock prices had risen so high the earnings yields were almost non-existent) or they do not fit with the particular goals or needs of the portfolio owner. A widow, for example, with one million dollars to invest and no other source of income is going to want to place a significant portion of her wealth in fixed income obligations that will generate a steady source of retirement income for the remainder of her life.

Her need is not necessarily to increase her net worth but to preserve what she has while living on the proceeds. A young corporate employee just out of college, however, is going to be most interested in building wealth. He can afford to ignore market fluctuations because he doesn’t depend upon his investments to meet day to day living expenses. A portfolio heavily concentrated in stocks, under reasonable market conditions, is the best option for this type of investor.

Model Types
Most asset allocation models fall somewhere between four objectives: preservation of capital, income, balanced, or growth.

Preservation of Capital. Asset allocation models designed for the preservation of capital are largely for those who expect to use their cash within the next twelve months and do not wish to risk losing even a small percentage of principal value for the possibility of capital gains. Investors that plan on paying for college, purchasing a house or acquiring a business are examples of those that would seek this type of allocation model. Cash and cash equivalents such as money markets, treasuries, and commercial paper often compose upwards of eighty percent of these portfolios. The biggest danger is that the return earned may not keep pace with inflation, eroding purchasing power in real terms.
Income. Portfolios that are designed to generate income for their owners often consist of investment-grade, fixed income obligations of large, profitable corporations, real estate (most often in the form of Real Estate Investment Trusts, or REITs), treasury notes, and, to a lesser extent, shares of blue-chip companies with long histories of continuous dividend payments. The typical income-oriented investor is one that is nearing retirement. Another example would be a young widow with small children receiving a lump-sum settlement from her husband’s life insurance policy and cannot risk losing the principal; although growth would be nice, the need for cash in hand for living expenses is of primary importance.
Balanced. Halfway between the income and growth asset allocation models is a compromise known as the balanced portfolio. For most people, the balanced portfolio is the best option not for financial reasons, but for emotional. Portfolios based on this model attempt to strike a compromise between long-term growth and current income. The ideal result is a mix of assets that generate cash as well as appreciates over time with smaller fluctuations in quoted principal value than the all-growth portfolio. Balanced portfolios tend to divide assets between medium-term investment-grade fixed income obligations and shares of common stocks in leading corporations, many of which may pay cash dividends. Real estate holdings via REITs are often a component as well. For the most part, a balanced portfolio is always vested (meaning very little is held in cash or cash equivalents unless the portfolio manager is absolutely convinced there are no attractive opportunities demonstrating an acceptable level of risk.)
Growth. The growth asset allocation model is designed for those that are just beginning their careers and are interested in building long-term wealth. The assets are not required to generate current income because the owner is actively employed, living off his or her salary for required expenses. Unlike an income portfolio, the investor is likely to increase his or her position each year by depositing additional funds. In bull markets, growth portfolios tend to outperform their counterparts significantly; in bear markets, they are the hardest hit. For the most part, up to one hundred percent of a growth modeled portfolio can be invested in common stocks, a substantial portion of which may not pay dividends and are relatively young. Portfolio managers often like to include an international equity component to expose the investor to economies other than the United States.
Changing with the Times
An investor that is actively engaged in an asset allocation strategy will find that his or her needs change as they move through the various stages of life. For that reason, some professional money managers recommend switching over a portion of your assets to a different model several years prior to major life changes. An investor that is ten years away from retirement, for example, would find himself moving 10% of his holding into an income-oriented allocation model each year. By the time he retires, the entire portfolio will reflect his new objectives.

The Rebalancing Controversy
One of the most popular practices on Wall Street is “rebalancing” a portfolio. Many times, this results because one particular asset class or investment has advanced substantially, coming to represent a significant portion of the investor’s wealth. To bring the portfolio back into balance with the original prescribed model, the portfolio manager will sell off a portion of the appreciated asset and reinvest the proceeds. Famed mutual fund manager Peter Lynch calls this practice, “cutting the flowers and watering the weeds.”

What is the average investor to do? On the one hand, we have the advice given by one of the managing directors of Tweedy Browne to a client that held $30 million in Berkshire Hathaway stock many years ago. When asked if she should sell, his response was (paraphrased), “has there been a change in fundamentals that makes you believe the investment is less attractive?” She said no and kept the stock. Today, her position is worth several hundred millions of dollars. On the other hand, we have cases such as ​Worldcom and Enron where investors lost everything.

Perhaps the best advice is only to hold the position if you are capable of evaluating the business operationally, are convinced that the fundamentals are still attractive, believe the company has a significant competitive advantage, and you are comfortable with the increased dependence upon the performance of a single investment. If you are unable or unwilling to commit to the criteria, you may be better served by rebalancing.

Strategy
Many investors believe that by merely diversifying one’s assets to the prescribed allocation model is going to alleviate the need to exercise discretion in choosing individual issues. It is a dangerous fallacy. Investors that are not capable of evaluating a business quantitatively or qualitatively must make it absolutely clear to their portfolio manager that they are interested only in defensively selected investments, regardless of age or wealth level.

Asset allocation involves dividing an investment portfolio among different asset categories, such as stocks, bonds, and cash. The process of determining which mix of assets to hold in your portfolio is a very personal one. The asset allocation that works best for you at any given point in your life will depend largely on your time horizon and your ability to tolerate risk.

Time Horizon
Your time horizon is the expected number of months, years, or decades you will be investing to achieve a particular financial goal. An investor with a longer time horizon may feel more comfortable taking on a riskier, or more volatile, investment because he or she can wait out slow economic cycles and the inevitable ups and downs of our markets. By contrast, an investor saving up for a teenager’s college education would likely take on less risk because he or she has a shorter time horizon.

Risk Tolerance
Risk tolerance is your ability and willingness to lose some or all of your original investment in exchange for greater potential returns. An aggressive investor, or one with a high-risk tolerance, is more likely to risk losing money in order to get better results. A conservative investor, or one with a low-risk tolerance, tends to favor investments that will preserve his or her original investment. In the words of the famous saying, conservative investors keep a “bird in the hand,” while aggressive investors seek “two in the bush.”

Risk versus Reward
When it comes to investing, risk and reward are inextricably entwined. You’ve probably heard the phrase “no pain, no gain” - those words come close to summing up the relationship between risk and reward. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. All investments involve some degree of risk. If you intend to purchase securities - such as stocks, bonds, or mutual funds - it’s important that you understand before you invest that you could lose some or all of your money.

The reward for taking on risk is the potential for a greater investment return. If you have a financial goal with a long time horizon, you are likely to make more money by carefully investing in asset categories with greater risk, like stocks or bonds, rather than restricting your investments to assets with less risk, like cash equivalents. On the other hand, investing solely in cash investments may be appropriate for short-term financial goals.

Investment Choices
While the SEC cannot recommend any particular investment product, you should know that a vast array of investment products exists - including stocks and stock mutual funds, corporate and municipal bonds, bond mutual funds, lifecycle funds, exchange-traded funds, money market funds, and U.S. Treasury securities.

For many financial goals, investing in a mix of stocks, bonds, and cash can be a good strategy. Let’s take a closer look at the characteristics of the three major asset categories.

Stocks
Stocks have historically had the greatest risk and highest returns among the three major asset categories. As an asset category, stocks are a portfolio’s “heavy hitter,” offering the greatest potential for growth. Stocks hit home runs, but also strike out. The volatility of stocks makes them a very risky investment in the short term. Large company stocks as a group, for example, have lost money on average about one out of every three years. And sometimes the losses have been quite dramatic. But investors that have been willing to ride out the volatile returns of stocks over long periods of time generally have been rewarded with strong positive returns.

Bonds
Bonds are generally less volatile than stocks but offer more modest returns. As a result, an investor approaching a financial goal might increase his or her bond holdings relative to his or her stock holdings because the reduced risk of holding more bonds would be attractive to the investor despite their lower potential for growth. You should keep in mind that certain categories of bonds offer high returns similar to stocks. But these bonds, known as high-yield or junk bonds, also carry higher risk.

Cash
Cash and cash equivalents - such as savings deposits, certificates of deposit, treasury bills, money market deposit accounts, and money market funds - are the safest investments, but offer the lowest return of the three major asset categories. The chances of losing money on an investment in this asset category are generally extremely low. The federal government guarantees many investments in cash equivalents. Investment losses in non-guaranteed cash equivalents do occur, but infrequently. The principal concern for investors investing in cash equivalents is inflation risk. This is the risk that inflation will outpace and erode investment returns over time.

Stocks, bonds, and cash are the most common asset categories. These are the asset categories you would likely choose from when investing in a retirement savings program or a college savings plan. But other asset categories - including real estate, precious metals and other commodities, and private equity - also exist, and some investors may include these asset categories within a portfolio. Investments in these asset categories typically have category-specific risks. Before you make any investment, you should understand the risks of the investment and make sure the risks are appropriate for you.

Why Asset Allocation Is So Important
By including asset categories with investment returns that move up and down under different market conditions within a portfolio, an investor can protect against significant losses. Historically, the returns of the three major asset categories have not moved up and down at the same time. Market conditions that cause one asset category to do well often cause another asset category to have average or poor returns. By investing in more than one asset category, you’ll reduce the risk that you’ll lose money and your portfolio’s overall investment returns will have a smoother ride. If one asset category’s investment return falls, you’ll be in a position to counteract your losses in that asset category with better investment returns in another asset category.

The Magic of Diversification
The practice of spreading money among different investments to reduce risk is known as diversification. By picking the right group of investments, you may be able to limit your losses and reduce the fluctuations of investment returns without sacrificing too much potential gain.

In addition, asset allocation is important because it has a major impact on whether you will meet your financial goal. If you don’t include enough risk in your portfolio, your investments may not earn a large enough return to meet your goal. For example, if you are saving for a long-term goal, such as retirement or college, most financial experts agree that you will likely need to include at least some stock or stock mutual funds in your portfolio. On the other hand, if you include too much risk in your portfolio, the money for your goal may not be there when you need it. A portfolio heavily weighted in stock or stock mutual funds, for instance, would be inappropriate for a short-term goal, such as saving for a family’s summer vacation.

How to Get Started
Determining the appropriate asset allocation model for a financial goal is a complicated task. Basically, you’re trying to pick a mix of assets that has the highest probability of meeting your goal at a level of risk you can live with. As you get closer to meeting your goal, you’ll need to be able to adjust the mix of assets.

If you understand your time horizon and risk tolerance - and have some investing experience - you may feel comfortable creating your own asset allocation model. “How to” books on investing often discuss general “rules of thumb,” and various online resources can help you with your decision. For example, although the SEC cannot endorse any particular formula or methodology, the Iowa Public Employees Retirement System (www.ipers.org) offers an online asset allocation calculator. In the end, you’ll be making a very personal choice. There is no single asset allocation model that is right for every financial goal. You’ll need to use the one that is right for you.

Some financial experts believe that determining your asset allocation is the most important decision that you’ll make with respect to your investments - that it’s even more important than the individual investments you buy. With that in mind, you may want to consider asking a financial professional to help you determine your initial asset allocation and suggest adjustments for the future. But before you hire anyone to help you with these enormously important decisions, be sure to do a thorough check of his or her credentials and disciplinary history.

The Connection Between Asset Allocation and Diversification
Diversification is a strategy that can be neatly summed up by the timeless adage, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” The strategy involves spreading your money among various investments in the hope that if one investment loses money, the other investments will more than make up for those losses.

Many investors use asset allocation as a way to diversify their investments among asset categories. But other investors deliberately do not. For example, investing entirely in stock, in the case of a twenty-five year-old investing for retirement, or investing entirely in cash equivalents, in the case of a family saving for the down payment on a house, might be reasonable asset allocation strategies under certain circumstances. But neither strategy attempts to reduce risk by holding different types of asset categories. So choosing an asset allocation model won’t necessarily diversify your portfolio. Whether your portfolio is diversified will depend on how you spread the money in your portfolio among different types of investments.

Diversification 101
A diversified portfolio should be diversified at two levels: between asset categories and within asset categories. So in addition to allocating your investments among stocks, bonds, cash equivalents, and possibly other asset categories, you’ll also need to spread out your investments within each asset category. The key is to identify investments in segments of each asset category that may perform differently under different market conditions.

One way of diversifying your investments within an asset category is to identify and invest in a wide range of companies and industry sectors. But the stock portion of your investment portfolio won’t be diversified, for example, if you only invest in only four or five individual stocks. You’ll need at least a dozen carefully selected individual stocks to be truly diversified.

Because achieving diversification can be so challenging, some investors may find it easier to diversify within each asset category through the ownership of mutual funds rather than through individual investments from each asset category. A mutual fund is a company that pools money from many investors and invests the money in stocks, bonds, and other financial instruments. Mutual funds make it easy for investors to own a small portion of many investments. A total stock market index fund, for example, owns stock in thousands of companies. That’s a lot of diversification for one investment!

Be aware, however, that a mutual fund investment doesn’t necessarily provide instant diversification, especially if the fund focuses on only one particular industry sector. If you invest in narrowly focused mutual funds, you may need to invest in more than one mutual fund to get the diversification you seek. Within asset categories, that may mean considering, for instance, large company stock funds as well as some small company and international stock funds. Between asset categories, that may mean considering stock funds, bond funds, and money market funds. Of course, as you add more investments to your portfolio, you’ll likely pay additional fees and expenses, which will, in turn, lower your investment returns. So you’ll need to consider these costs when deciding the best way to diversify your portfolio.

Options for One-Stop Shopping- Lifecycle Funds
To accommodate investors who prefer to use one investment to save for a particular investment goal, such as retirement, some mutual fund companies offer a product known as a “lifecycle fund.” A lifecycle fund is a diversified mutual fund that automatically shifts towards a more conservative mix of investments as it approaches a particular year in the future, known as its “target date.”

Changing Your Asset Allocation
The most common reason for changing your asset allocation is a change in your time horizon. In other words, as you get closer to your investment goal, you’ll likely need to change your asset allocation. For example, most people investing for retirement hold less stock and more bonds and cash equivalents as they get closer to retirement age. You may also need to change your asset allocation if there is a change in your risk tolerance, financial situation, or the financial goal itself.

But savvy investors typically do not change their asset allocation based on the relative performance of asset categories - for example, increasing the proportion of stocks in one’s portfolio when the stock market is hot. Instead, that’s when they “rebalance” their portfolios.

Rebalancing 101
Rebalancing is bringing your portfolio back to your original asset allocation mix. This is necessary because over time some of your investments may become out of alignment with your investment goals. You’ll find that some of your investments will grow faster than others. By rebalancing, you’ll ensure that your portfolio does not overemphasize one or more asset categories, and you’ll return your portfolio to a comfortable level of risk.

For example, let’s say you determined that stock investments should represent 60% of your portfolio. But after a recent stock market increase, stock investments represent 80% of your portfolio. You’ll need to either sell some of your stock investments or purchase investments from an under-weighted asset category in order to reestablish your original asset allocation mix.

When you rebalance, you’ll also need to review the investments within each asset allocation category. If any of these investments are out of alignment with your investment goals, you’ll need to make changes to bring them back to their original allocation within the asset category.

There are basically three different ways you can rebalance your portfolio:

You can sell off investments from over-weighted asset categories and use the proceeds to purchase investments for under-weighted asset categories.
You can purchase new investments for under-weighted asset categories.
If you are making continuous contributions to the portfolio, you can alter your contributions so that more investments go to under-weighted asset categories until your portfolio is back into balance.
Before you rebalance your portfolio, you should consider whether the method of rebalancing you decide to use will trigger transaction fees or tax consequences. Your financial professional or tax adviser can help you identify ways that you can minimize these potential costs.