Academic finance has had a remarkable impact on many financial services. Yet long-term investors have received curiously little guidance from academic financial economists. Mean-variance analysis, developed almost fifty years ago, has provided a basic paradigm for portfolio choice. This approach usefully emphasizes the ability of diversification to reduce risk, but it ignores several critically important factors. Most notably, the analysis is static; it assumes that investors care only about risks to wealth one period ahead. However, many investors—-both individuals and institutions such as charitable foundations or universities—-seek to finance a stream of consumption over a long lifetime. In addition, mean-variance analysis treats financial wealth in isolation from income. Long-term investors typically receive a stream of income and use it, along with financial wealth, to support their consumption. At the theoretical level, it is well understood that the solution to a long-term portfolio choice problem can be very different from the solution to a short-term problem. Long-term investors care about intertemporal shocks to investment opportunities and labor income as well as shocks to wealth itself, and they may use financial assets to hedge their intertemporal risks. This should be important in practice because there is a great deal of empirical evidence that investment opportunities—-both interest rates and risk premia on bonds and stocks—-vary through time. Yet this insight has had little influence on investment practice because it is hard to solve for optimal portfolios in intertemporal models. This book seeks to develop the intertemporal approach into an empirical paradigm that can compete with the standard mean-variance analysis. The book shows that long-term inflation-indexed bonds are the riskless asset for long-term investors, it explains the conditions under which stocks are safer assets for long-term than for short-term investors, and it shows how labor income influences portfolio choice. These results shed new light on the rules of thumb used by financial planners. The book explains recent advances in both analytical and numerical methods, and shows how they can be used to understand the portfolio choice problems of long-term investors.

This volume provides a scientific foundation for the advice offered by financial planners to long-term investors. Based upon statistics on asset return behavior and assumed investor objectives, the authors derive optimal portfolio rules that investors can compare with existing rules of thumb.

An easy-to-understand how-to guide to the single most important thing you can do in investing — choosing and mixing your assets successfully. You don’t need to be an expert analyst, a star stock-picker, or a rocket scientist to have better investment results than most other investors. You just need to allocate your assets in the right way, and have the conviction to stick with that allocation. The big secret behind asset allocation — the secret that most sophisticated investors know and use to their benefit — is that it’s really not all that hard to do. Asset Allocation For Dummies serves as a comprehensive guide to maximizing returns and minimizing risk — while managing taxes, fees and other costs — in putting together a portfolio to reflect your unique financial goals. Jerry A. Miccolis (Basking Ridge, NJ), CFA®, CFP®, FCAS, MAAA is a widely quoted expert commentator who has been interviewed in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and appeared on CBS Radio and ABC-TV. He is a senior financial advisor and co-owner of Brinton Eaton Wealth Advisors (www.brintoneaton.com), a fee-only investment management, tax advisory and financial planning firm in Madison, N.J. Dorianne R. Perrucci (Scotch Plains, NJ) is a freelance writer who has been published in The New York Times, Newsweek, and TheStreet.com, and has collaborated on several financial books, including I.O.U.S.A, One Nation, Under Stress, In Debt (Wiley, 2008).

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 1,3, European Business School - International University Schlo Reichartshausen Oestrich-Winkel, 28 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The decision as to which Assets should be included in a portfolio is first addressed in a Strategic Asset Allocation policy. The determination of the Strategic Asset Allocation is one of the most important factors that influences a portfolio's performance. The process of defining a policy within the Strategic Asset Allocation should be done by both the portfolio manager and the potential investor. Together with the International Capital Asset Pricing Model the Strategic Asset Allocation tries to find an optimal portfolio which maximizes return and, at the same time, tries to minimize the possible risk. Due to currency and inflation risk, hedging should be considered as crucial point during the Strategic Asset Allocation. 1 2 Strategic Asset Allocation under consideration of the International Capital Asset Pricing Model decides to which asset classes a portfolio should be divided. Factors which determine the decision are expected returns, variances and covariances as well as the degree of risk aversion. The analysis of mean-variance which was mostly developed by Harry Markowitz gave portfolio advice until the early eighties concerning the optimal asset allocation. The aims of this approach were to minimize risk while receiving the highest possible return. Over the years the method was critized several times because of a lack of decisive factors. Markowitz only assumed a one period model and permanent income, currency and inflation risk were also ignored.3 Strategic Asset Allocation is much more than investing short- term. Investors care about inflation and currency risk. Hedging is particularly needed.

We study the effect of parameter uncertainty on the long-run risk for three asset classes: stocks, bills and bonds. We model return dynamics as a Bayesian vector autoregression. With an uninformative prior we find that parameter uncertainty raises the annualised long-run volatilities of all three asset classes proportionally with the same factor relative to estimates that are conditional on ML parameter estimates. Correlations among returns appear robust against parameter uncertainty. As a result the effect of the investment horizon on optimal asset allocations is much weaker compared to models in which only equity returns are subject to parameter uncertainty. While equity is more volatile, the same holds for the other asset classes. Results are sensitive to alternative informative priors, but generally the term structure of risk for stocks and bonds are relatively flat for investment horizons up to 15 years.

The comprehensive guide to private market asset allocation Asset Allocation and Private Markets provides institutional investors, such as pension funds, insurance groups and family offices, with a single-volume authoritative resource on including private markets in strategic asset allocation. Written by four academic and practitioner specialists, this book provides the background knowledge investors need, coupled with practical advice from experts in the field. The discussion focuses on private equity, private debt and private real assets, and their correlation with other asset classes to establish optimized investment portfolios. Armed with the grounded and critical perspectives provided in this book, investors can tailor their portfolio and effectively allocate assets to traditional and private markets in their best interest. In-depth discussion of return, risks, liquidity and other factors of asset allocation takes a more practical turn with guidance on allocation construction and capital deployment, the “endowment model,” and hedging — or lack thereof. Unique in the depth and breadth of information on this increasingly attractive asset class, this book is an invaluable resource for investors seeking new strategies. Discover alternative solutions to traditional asset allocation strategies Consider attractive returns of private markets Delve into private equity, private debt and private real assets Gain expert perspectives on correlation, risk, liquidity, and portfolio construction Private markets represent a substantial proportion of global wealth. Amidst disappointing returns from stocks and bonds, investors are increasingly looking to revitalise traditional asset allocation strategies by weighting private market structures more heavily in their portfolios. Pension fund and other long-term asset managers need deeper information than is typically provided in tangential reference in broader asset allocation literature; Asset Allocation and Private Markets fills the gap, with comprehensive information and practical guidance.

An up close look at an investment strategy that can handle today's uncertain financial environment Market uncertainty cannot be eliminated. So rather than attempt to do away with it, why not embrace it? That is what this book is designed to do. The Permanent Portfolio takes you through Harry Browne's Permanent Portfolio approach—which can weather a wide range of economic conditions from inflation and deflation to recession—and reveals how it can help investors protect and grow their money. Written by Craig Rowland and Mike Lawson, this reliable resource demonstrates everything from a straightforward four-asset Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) version of the strategy all the way up to a sophisticated approach using Swiss bank storage of selected assets for geographic and political diversification. In all cases, the authors provide step-by-step guidance based upon personal experience. This timeless strategy is supported by more than three decades of empirical evidence The authors skillfully explain how to incorporate the ideas of the Permanent Portfolio into your financial endeavors in order to maintain, protect, and grow your money Includes select updates of Harry Browne's Permanent Portfolio approach, which reflect our changing times The Permanent Portfolio is an essential guide for investors who are serious about building a better portfolio.