Random Roger's Retirement Planning

MARCH 2, 2025

Barron's wrote about the difficulty of spending down accumulated assets in retirement. You can see that the market started to care about price inflation around the time of the 2020 Pandemic Crash. Starting the clock in March 2020 gives a much different picture. Several quick hits today. XME is a client holding.

Taxes

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

DECEMBER 22, 2024

That leads to a Tweet from Krishna Memani who worked at Oppenheimer for a long time and who has been running the Endowment at Lafayette College since 2020. The min vol version is valid longer term but 2020 would have been a challenging time to hold.

Portfolio

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

NOVEMBER 21, 2024

It did decline about 5% in the 2020 Pandemic Crash and in 2022 it was up 1.36%. The backtest runs from the start of 2011 to the end of 2020. Um ok, but MSTR started buying Bitcoin in 2020. The USAF backtest and RAAX don't really look too similar to me. RAAX is much more volatile. In the period studied, CPI compounded at 2.5%

Asset Allocation

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

JANUARY 5, 2025

Yes the dividend funds did better than SPY in 2022 but not 2020 and in the financial crisis, I believe DVY was the only one that was around and being heaviest in financials, it did very badly. Lagging the market cap weighted SPY doesn't have to be a bad thing but the max drawdown numbers are not compelling and neither is the volatility.

Taxes

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

MARCH 12, 2025

It had a big drawdown in the 2020 Pandemic Crash which, ok, something like that sure but it had a surprisingly big drawdown in 2022 as you can see at 13%. It's growth rate since inception is 3.58% going back to September, 2018 but a lot of that comes from a 15% lift in 2021 (numbers per testfol.io).

Portfolio

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

MAY 28, 2025

In the partial year of 2020, Portfolio 1 was down 83 basis points while the S&P was up 18%. You can see just by looking that Portfolio 1 has actually taken a very different path to a similar result as the S&P 500. In 2021 it lagged the index by 12%.

Portfolio

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

MARCH 25, 2025

The S&P 500 doesn't fall 20% in a quarter very often but obviously it can happen, it happened in Q1 of 2020 and the 3rd quarter of 2008 and I imagine there were others. The next day the fund would have a new buffer 20% down from there. If someone is actually going to use this, it is crucial they sell before the 20% threshold is hit.

Taxes

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

MARCH 18, 2025

Portfolio 1 lagged by quite a bit in 2019 and then even more in 2020. I took what he was saying to be expressed as follows in a portfolio. And compared to just VBAIX in Portfolio 2 The longer term result is interesting. Then it made it back in 2022 when it was only down 1.1%.

Marketing

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

MARCH 3, 2025

Looking at the 2020 Pandemic Crash, that was a fast decline but it played out over several weeks and while in real time we could recognize it as more of a crash than a long slow bear market, it didn't feel that fast. Moving to markets which hopefully we understand just a little better.

Clients

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

APRIL 3, 2025

I saw where this was the worst single day drop since one of the bad days during the 2020 Pandemic Crash. Markets got pasted today of course. Ok, so a quick reminder that bad days have happened before, obvious statement. There have probably been more truly terrible market days than any of us could possible remember.

Portfolio Management

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

JULY 22, 2025

The worst deviation between the two was in 2020 when Portfolio 2 lagged by 740 basis points. The deviation was greater than 300 basis points only three times, including 2020. But invoking Karl Popper, it only takes one negative to disprove a theory.

Portfolio

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

DECEMBER 27, 2024

From its all time high in July 2020, TLH is down 41%. My assertion has been that retail investors want bonds to kick off an income stream without moving in price and that is not what you get with this sort of ETF. The price might literally never recover.

Portfolio

Yardley Wealth Management

JUNE 25, 2025

The post How Do You Turn Retirement Savings into a Reliable Income Strategy? How Do You Turn Retirement Savings into a Reliable Income Strategy? You’ve likely spent years building your retirement nest egg—saving diligently, investing wisely, and contributing to retirement accounts along the way.

Retirement

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

DECEMBER 28, 2024

The Bloomberg article included a couple of quotes about dialing down the equity exposure in retirement which has been the default approach but that chart shows why dialing down is a bad idea. The simplest example would be the person to retired at the end of 2007 and then 12 months later, the stock market was 39% lower.

Portfolio

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

NOVEMBER 9, 2024

It offered no crisis alpha though in the 2020 Pandemic Crash and in 2018 it was down 13.5% The article mentioned that SYLD benchmarks to midcap stocks. There's kind of a mixed bag here for the results. In addition to what is shown above, in 2022 SYLD only dropped 6.12%. versus 4.5%

Investments

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

JANUARY 23, 2025

Both unleveraged versions were down 800-900 basis points less than the others during the 2020 Pandemic crash. In 2022, the two unleveraged versions were down 66 basis points and up 3.56% respectively while the leveraged version fell 6.87%, a great result, while plain VBAIX dropped 16.87%.

Portfolio

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

FEBRUARY 14, 2025

Both True North portfolios also held up relatively well in the 2020 Pandemic Crash which are the max drawdown numbers in the chart. Despite all the leverage, Portfolio 1 has a very smooth ride including up a lot in 2022. It's only down year was 2018 with a decline of 7.91%.

Portfolio

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

JUNE 1, 2025

In 2022 it was only down 3.32% which is really good of course but in the 2020 Pandemic Crash it fell 20%. That might not be a useful way to look at though as the fund currently owns a lot of ETFs that weren't around in 2020. TRTY has had mixed results with crisis alpha.

Numbers

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

FEBRUARY 23, 2025

The "endowment" result is very close to red line VBAIX every year except 2020 when it lagged by almost 600 basis point and 2022 when it outperformed by about 500 basis points. It did worse in the 2020 Pandemic Crash by 200 basis points which isn't problematic for how quickly everything snapped back. Is it this?

Math

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

OCTOBER 28, 2024

All five funds really struggled from 2015-2020 but there was variation among the five. You wouldn't say they are lowly correlated but the correlations aren't that tight so maybe there is some insulation against things going wrong versus putting 25% into just one managed futures fund. We looked at a similar chart the other day.

Risk Management

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

APRIL 11, 2025

I expanded on it a little bit and noted it's not particularly relaxing but I would reiterate that this is a great time to lean forward and learn about some things in real time versus looking at a backtest from a benchmark event like the 2020 Pandemic Crash or 2022. All of the different factors have their moments in the sun.

Portfolio

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

MARCH 8, 2025

It did go down almost 9% in the 2020 Pandemic Crash but that was just a fraction of what the S&P 500 dropped and in 2022, OCRP was up 9.15%. If they can have single stock ETFs why not an ETF with just two holdings? I threw tail in as well as the S&P 500. In late 2018 OCRP moved up when the market had a fast drop.

Taxes

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

JANUARY 22, 2025

None of them helped though in the 2020 Pandemic Crash. MERIX is a client and personal holding. The 50/50 version is the most interesting to me. The 50/50 version did far and away the best in 2022. It probably will eventually unless the next bear market comes before that happens.

Asset Allocation

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

APRIL 27, 2025

The struggles for AGG have been prolonged of course but it is also important to mention that MERIX, SRLN and ARBIX all got hit hard in the 2020 Pandemic Crash so they are not infallible but the snap back was quick and the hit was no where close to that of equities. AGG's duration isn't that long.

Taxes

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

JANUARY 17, 2025

The 2022 numbers are of course favorable but they did get hit hard in the 2020 Pandemic Crash. Neither version differentiates in terms of volatility versus VBAIX but in 2022 the ACWI version was only down 4.84% and the SPY version was only down 4.75% versus 16.87% for VBAIX. This isn't radically different from a lot of ideas we look at.

Portfolio

Carson Wealth

FEBRUARY 27, 2025

Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs) Your distributions from your retirement plans are reported on your 1099-R form , but the form doesnt specify how much went to a QCD. NOLs from tax years ending after 2020 can only be carried forwardand carryforwards are limited to 80% of taxable income in any one tax period.

Taxes

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

FEBRUARY 9, 2025

In 2020 and 2023 the fund was unchanged versus up a lot for the other two. To be clear though, the Mystery Fund is not intended to be a single portfolio solution. The year by year tells a slightly different story in case it isn't apparent from the chart.

Portfolio

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

NOVEMBER 17, 2024

Looking at how it has actually traded though, yes more volatility and you can see in the chart it got pasted in the 2020 Pandemic Crash (poor first responder?) Maybe not rigorous study, but if you shorten the time frame of any of the above to start after MDCEX fell 36% in the 2020 Pandemic Crash, the Kurtosis comes way down.

Portfolio

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

MARCH 30, 2025

MCW also did great in 2021, 2020 and 2019. For the last couple of years, I think a lot of people gravitated to just using market cap weighted in their accounts, that seems like it has been the conversation and for 2023 and 2024 the returns for MCW have been great. Occasionally of course, MCW gets pasted.

Portfolio

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

JANUARY 30, 2025

The full term backtest of Trinity/Permanent Inspired is compelling of course but it trailed VBAIX and PRPFX in 2020, 2021 and 2023. I built out the following, allocating 25% to each holding and compared to VBAIX, PRPFX and TRTY. In 2024 it was slightly behind PRPFX and slightly ahead of VBAIX.

Engineering

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

MAY 13, 2025

It might be debatable whether we've gone through a full cycle from the start of 2020 but it certainly has been a full five and a half years. Clearly, no attempt at resilience can be infallible but I do think being reliable most of the time is possible.

Portfolio

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

MARCH 9, 2025

When we do these exercises, I'm not really trying to find something that will compound miles ahead of plain vanilla, the objective is more about smoothing out the ride and trying to build a portfolio that will have a robust result in the face of a market event like in 2022 or maybe even a fast decline like the 2020 Pandemic Crash.

Portfolio

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

FEBRUARY 10, 2025

Two of the three strategies have traded sideways in the 2020's. I said I was interested enough to start following it, having no idea what to expect. This chart from the paper doesn't paint a rosy picture.

Math

Random Roger's Retirement Planning

DECEMBER 19, 2024

In the 2020 Pandemic Crash, PUTW went down in lockstep with the S&P 500 but in 2022 it was only down 10% versus 18%. With less dramatic declines, ISPY usually holds up better than the index. WDTE sells put options. I'm not sure about WDTE specifically but PUTW which also sells puts has had mixed results with going down less.

Risk Management

The Big Picture

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

Recall last week , we were discussing thinking about the impact of retiring Baby Boomers on the equity markets and of rising rates on housing. The demographic question touches on a big issue: $6 trillion dollars in 650,000 (401k) retirement plans held by 10s of millions of Americans.

Distribution

The Big Picture

NOVEMBER 27, 2023

When you get it wrong, it crushes your retirement plans. My own track record at making big calls is pretty damned good, but none of our clients wants me slinging around their retirement monies based on my gut instinct. But when they get market timing wrong, they lose subscribers. I sure as hell don’t want to either.

Marketing

The Chicago Financial Planner

NOVEMBER 8, 2021

After a significant drop in March of 2020 in the wake of the pandemic, the S&P 500 has staged an amazing recovery. The index finished 2020 with a gain in excess of 18%. As someone saving for retirement , what should you do now? Approaching retirement and want another opinion on where you stand? Review and rebalance

Retirement