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Managed Accounts — It’s Not (Just) the Allocation

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   Managed accounts have been praised, criticized, and litigated — often on the theory that they’re little more than expensive target-date funds. However, a recent report actually quantifies their impact — and turns out, it’s not an investment story, it’s behavioral. That report — inauspiciously titled “ The 2026 Managed Accounts Research Series: Analyzing the Value of Managed Accounts ” — was published in mid-January by Morningstar. Of course, Morningstar has a fair amount of “skin” in the managed account space — a reason, if you will, to find a favorable outcome for the design.  And, sure enough, the analysis claims that managed accounts outperform target-date funds and the efforts of so-called “do-it-yourself” investors for — well, everyone. More specifically, the report claims that MAs increase the median wealth/salary ratio at age 65 by 5.9% for TDF investors and by 11.4% for DIY investors. Across all plan participants, adopting an MA led to an overall increase of 7....
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Gooseneckers, Misleading Medians, and the Art of Retirement Alarmism

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   Did you hear about the one that claimed an “average” American worker has less than $1,000 saved for retirement? Well, here’s hoping you didn’t — that your day was occupied with real issues, or perhaps even better that you saw the headline, recognized it for the ludicrousocity [i]  of the claim, and scrolled on without clicking, sharing, or commenting.  But some didn’t. Drawn like a moth to a flame (or perhaps more precisely, gooseneckers at the scene of a horrific accident), some likely did click, if only to see the preposterous assumptions and/or incredulous inverse compounding applied to create such a ridiculous conclusion. The  CBS report  cites “research” (and I use that term loosely here) by the National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS) which — if one has paid attention to its previous outputs might more credibly be called the National Institute on Retirement INsecurity. I say that because the organization — which labels itself “nonpartisan” ...
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Lawyers, Funds and Money

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  I recently stumbled across a report that claimed a “Massive Gap Between Participant and Attorney Recoveries in ERISA Lawsuits.” That wasn’t exactly news to me, though it was a handy quantification [i]  of a subset of ERISA settlements to make the case that the per-participant recoveries in ERISA litigation pale in comparison to the 25%–33% “pay day” that the plaintiffs’ bar gets in cases where there is a settlement. The  report  — by Davis & Harman — focused on 27 settlements in 2025 involving (only) underperformance and excessive fee cases. In producing their conclusion, they employed some math that was arguably a bit “squishy” [ii]  — and the results are all over the board — but you didn’t need to rely on that to see — and appreciate — the huge gap between what wound up in the lawyers’ pockets versus participants. The rationale is, of course, that class action suits can be expensive to mount and pursue. The attorneys take on these cases, investing their ...
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A Super Bowl 60 Portfolio Pick

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   The Patriots and Seahawks have some Super Bowl history — and some think the outcome might have an impact on the stock market — not to mention your 401(k)!  Yes, that’s what adherents of the so-called Super Bowl Indicator [i]  would have you believe — based on a “theory” that when a team from the old National Football League wins the Super Bowl, the S&P 500 will rise, and when a team from the old American Football League prevails, stock prices will fall. It’s a “theory” that has been found to be correct nearly 80% of the time — for roughly three-quarters of the 59 Super Bowls to date. Not that it hasn’t been tackled short of the “goal” line…particularly in recent years. Portfolio Prognostications One need to look back no further than last year’s victory by the NFC/original NFL Philadelphia Eagles commanding victory over the AFC/original AFL Kansas City Chiefs to see a testament to this theory — as the S&P 500 closed up nearly 17% in 2025. That said, you mig...
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