Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Asset Allocation For Retirement: Simple Heuristics And Target-Date Funds, Steven D. Dolvin, William K. Templeton, William Rieber

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

We examine common asset allocation strategies for retirement investing, considering both static and dynamic approaches, as well as those allocation policies used by leading target-date fund providers. We studied the average performance of each strategy over historical rolling periods (that is, bootstrapping), using actual annual returns starting in 1926. Then we applied the simulation method to review potential future results, as well as to provide additional insight into the structure and characteristics of each approach. We find that, over time, certain static approaches are essentially equivalent to dynamic strategies that reduce equity exposure through time. Further, we find that most …