Balancing Act: Trying to Make Money
If you ask a stupid question, you will get a stupid answer. Today's stupid question: Which way is the market headed next?
Sure, we all want to know if stocks are breaking out of their recent funk and whether bond yields will rise or fall. Problem is, this crystal-ball gazing is a colossal waste of time.
It isn't simply that the pundits -- professional and amateur -- often get it wrong. More important, the whole exercise is totally unnecessary. The reality is, you don't need to guess the market's direction in order to profit from shifting valuations. Instead, all it takes is a little self-discipline. Intrigued? Bear with me while I explain.
Guessing games. No, I am not arguing that you should ignore stock and bond valuations. In fact, I think it's important to have some sense for whether the market is expensive or cheap, because that has a big impact on long-run returns.
STAYING THE COURSE
Looking to rebalance your portfolio? Here are three tips:
Don't allocate an uncomfortably large amount to any one sector, or you may balk at buying more when the sector suffers.
Minimize trading in your taxable account, which could create accounting nightmares and trigger hefty tax bills.
Rebalance into broad sectors, not individual stocks, which may fall -- and then keep on falling.
And right now, current valuations suggest returns will be modest. A mix of high-quality bonds might yield a paltry 5%. That's a good indicator of bond returns for the decade ahead.
Meanwhile, to get a handle on stock returns, you need to consider both earnings and dividends. If inflation runs at 2?% and corporate America does a decent job during the next decade, we might get 5?% annual growth in earnings per share. Tack on an extra 1?% for dividends, and we are looking at 7% annual stock returns.
This 7% assumes stocks hang in there at their current 21 times earnings for the past 12 months. If price/earnings multiples contract, returns could be a lot lower. Either way, performance isn't going to be great, so you probably ought to save aggressively to compensate.
This long-term forecast, of course, shouldn't be confused with a short-term market prediction. Nobody knows how stocks and bonds will fare during the weeks and months ahead. Which brings me to a recent, humbling experience.
On April 21, I opined, "I don't think this is the moment to load up on real-estate investment trusts." The article focused on valuations among equity REITs, which make their money by buying and then renting out shopping malls, apartments, office buildings and other properties. With equity-REIT yields close to their all-time low, I argued that REITs were unlikely to deliver decent long-run gains.
I still think REITs are expensive, and I still think I am right about the long term. But I sure haven't been right so far. Since the article appeared, equity REITs have jumped 8%. Painful? It only hurts when I write.
Goosing returns. So if you cannot forecast the market's short-term direction, what should you do? My advice: Forget trying to predict the unpredictable -- and instead take advantage of this unpredictability. And the way you do that is with rebalancing.
Start by setting target percentages for your various holdings. You might settle on a mix of, say, 5% money-market funds, 10% high-quality corporate bonds, 10% inflation-indexed Treasury bonds, 5% high-yield junk bonds, 30% large-company U.S. stocks, 15% small-company stocks, 5% real-estate investment trusts, 15% developed-foreign-market stocks and 5% emerging-market stocks.
Once you have built your desired portfolio, you should then rebalance once a year to bring your investment mix back into line with your target percentages. Suppose you allocated 5% to REITs and the sector continues to soar. When you next rebalance, you would want to prune your REITs back to 5%.
In your retirement account, you can rebalance by shifting money out of winning sectors and into the losers. But in your taxable account, this sort of trading is a bad idea, because you could trigger hefty tax bills. Instead, to keep your taxable account in balance, funnel your dividends, interest and any new savings into your portfolio's underweighted sectors.
What's the point of all this? The principal goal is risk control. By scaling back winners, you ensure your portfolio doesn't become dangerously overweighted in any one sector.
But as an added bonus, rebalancing offers a disciplined strategy for making money from market gyrations. The reason: It forces you to buy into depressed sectors that may be due for a rebound, while lightening up on highflying sectors that could be set to tumble.
"Rebalancing is just a nice reliable way of betting against the noise and betting on mean reversion," says William Bernstein, an investment adviser in North Bend, Ore.
The impact on your portfolio's performance will vary. For instance, rebalancing between stocks and bonds is great for risk control, but it may not boost your long-run returns, because you will usually be forced to sell stocks, thus cutting back on your portfolio's best-performing investment.
On the other hand, you can garner a sizable performance bonus by rebalancing among a collection of stock-market sectors that generate fairly similar long-run returns. For proof, consider some numbers from T. Rowe Price Group Inc., the Baltimore mutual-fund manager. I asked the folks there to calculate the return on a portfolio with 50% U.S. stocks, 25% foreign shares and 25% REITs.
If you had invested $10,000 in that portfolio 30 years ago and never rebalanced, you would have accumulated $347,000 by year-end 2003. But if you had rebalanced back to your 50-25-25 mix once a year, you would have amassed $390,000. And here's the impressive part: To pocket that extra $43,000, you didn't once have to guess the market's direction.
如何从市场前景中获利？
如果问得蠢，自然答得笨。
今天这个蠢问题就是：市场意欲何往？
当然，我们都想知道股市是否会走出当前的低潮，债市收益率是涨还是跌。但问题是，这只水晶球你怎么盯著它看都是浪费时间。
这倒不是因为专家们有时也会犯错，而是因为做这些预测根本就犯不著。事实是，要想从市场波动中获利，根本无需猜测未来动向，只要稍稍自律即可。好奇了？且听我慢慢道来。
首先，我不是说要你把股票和债券的估值弃之不顾。实际上，我认为大家对市场当前是处于超买还是超卖状态多少要有一点认识，这一点很重要，因为它会对长期投资收益产生重大影响。
当前的市场价格水平表明，未来的投资收益将处于中等水平。一组高质量债券的收益率只有区区5%不到，但未来十年能保持这一水平就不错了。
而要了解股票的投资回报率，就得计算公司收益和派息。如果通货膨胀率是2.5%，而美国企业在今后十年中又干得不错，那么每股收益年增幅可达5.5%。再加上1.5%的派息率，股票的投资收益率就是7%。
实现这7%收益率的前提是股票的往绩本益比维持在目前21倍的水平上。如果本益比下滑，投资回报也就会随之减少。
不管哪种投资，5%或者7%的收益率都不怎么样，所以你最好的选择恐怕还是多存钱。
当然，这种长远的预期不能和短期市场预测混为一谈。没人知道接下来几周或几个月股市债市会如何变化，就是这一点让我有了最近这次惨痛的经历。
4月21号的时候，我觉得不应该继续投资房地产投资信托基金类股了。我当时撰文重点探讨了这类股票的估值。这类机构通过先收购后出租各类地产的方式赚取利润，他们投资的地产包括商场、公寓、写字楼等。当时这类股票的收益率接近历史低点，我认为它们不太可能带来良好的长期回报。
现在我还是觉得这类股票的本益比过高，依然相信他们不会带来良好的长期回报。但问题是，到目前为止这个观点并未得到事实的验证。从那篇文章发表以来，房地产投资信托基金类股已跃升了8%。
所以，如果你预料不到市场的短期动向，那该怎么办？我的建议是：根本就别去预测那些无法预知的事，但要抓住机会从中获利。办法就是重新调整头寸组合。
首先，对你的各种投资确定一个比例。比如说，你对货币市场基金的投资是5%，高质量公司债券的投资是10%，通货膨胀加权美国国债的投资是10%，高收益垃圾债券投资是5%，大型美国公司股票投资30%，小型股投资15%，房地产投资信托基金类股投资5%，发达国家股市投资15%，剩下5%是新兴市场股票。
建立了满意的投资组合之后，你应该每年调整一次，使其中各个品种的比例与最初的目标保持一致。如上例，对房地产投资信托基金类股的投资比例是5%，年内这类股票持续飙升。那么下次调整时，还应该把这类股票的比例调整回5%。
在退休金帐户中，你可以把上涨类别的资金调入下跌类别，来实现调整目标。但是在应税帐户中，这种做法就是愚不可及了，因为它会给你带来一张高额税单。这种情况下，保持应税帐目不动，把派息，利息和所有收益转入投资组合中表现较差的类别当中。
这么做的目的？基本准则就是风险控制。因为减持了价格上涨的投资类别，整个组合就不会变得过于倾向于某个投资类别。
不过失之东榆，你就能收之桑隅。重新调整投资比例是一种严格的投资策略，可使投资免受市场动荡的拖累。原因在此：它迫使你买入有望反弹的受挫品种，同时减持那些必将下滑的当红品种。
俄勒冈州North Bend的投资顾问伯恩斯坦(William Bernstein)说，重新调整投资比例，是一种很少人使用但很可靠的投资策略，它既不在市场流行观点后面亦步亦趋，也不是简简单单地反其道而行之。
不同投资组合沿用这同一种策略得到的结果也不同。例如，重新调整股票和债券投资比例的做法能够很好地控制投资风险，但对于提升长期投资回报所助无多。因为通常情况下，你都不得不减持股票增持债券，从而降低你投资组合中表现最好的那个类别的比例。
但另一方面，调整不同类股的比例会带来可观的收益。证据在于T. Rowe Price Group Inc.提供的一些数据。假设某个投资组合中，50%投资于美国股市，25%投资于外国股市，25%是房地产投资信托基金类股。
如果30年前你就按照这样的比例投入了10,000美元，而且从来没有重新调整过投资比例，那么到了2003年年底，你的累计所得就会高达347,000美元。但如果你按照上述比例每年调整一次，那么所得就是390,000美元。最难得的是，实现后一种更高的收益你根本无需预测市场动向。
想要调整你的投资组合了吗？下面是三个小窍门：
--每个类别的比例都不能太高，否则一旦这个类别受挫，你也不得不大量买入。
--尽量减少通过应税帐户的交易，这会让你陷入帐目计算的恶梦，还会带来大笔税单。
--调整只是针对类别而言，千万别只看个股，因为它难保不会一跌再跌。
