Nevin's Data "Points"

It’s hard to believe it’s now been 10 years since the 2008 financial crisis. Let’s face it — no matter how busy or hectic your week has been, I’m betting it’s been a walk in the park compared to those times. Yes, it was just 10 years ago this week that Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy — the same day that Bank of America announced its plans to acquire Merrill Lynch, and a day on which, not surprisingly, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down just over 500 points. That, in turn, was just a day before the Fed authorized an $85 billion loan to AIG — and that on the same day that the net asset value of shares in the Reserve Primary Money Fund “broke the buck.” This was made all the more surreal to me because it was going on while I — and several hundred advisers — were in the middle of an adviser conference. Not that the folks on the panels were getting much attention. The funny thing is, looking back (and armed with the prism of 20/20 hindsight), there were lo...

Before target-date funds were “cool” (or widely available), I had steered my mother toward an asset-allocation fund as a good place to invest her retirement plan rollover balance. The logic was, I thought, impeccable: A professional money manager would be keeping an eye on and rebalancing those investments on a regular basis. The fee was reasonable, and the portfolio was split about 60/40 between stocks and bonds, which also seemed reasonable in view of her investment horizon. From time to time Mom would call and ask if we needed to rebalance that investment — and I confidently assured her that there was no need to do so, that the fund’s design took that into account. Then at some point (though definitely between 2006 and 2008) that professional manager decided that a “better” allocation was to shift the asset allocation to be invested nearly entirely in stocks. Now, knowing how such things work, I can’t imagine that a shift that dramatic wasn’t clearly and concisely communicated to...