Articles About Investments

As one of the more common processes developed in advisory firms, there is a high level of interest by both advisors and clients in how investment performance is actually calculated. While it may seem straightforward in determining the ups and downs of a portfolio, there are actually quite a bit of assumptions and factors that take into consideration time periods, account values, and especially deposits and withdrawals, in addition to the actual performance of the underlying investments in a portfolio.

On the surface, it may seem straightforward in how these calculations are developed; however, in practice, there are often many areas and methods that are not as understood, and can become a source of confusion as advisors select a method for providing this critical information to clients, regulators, and other industry bodies such as GIPS.

In this article, Chris Hastings of Panoramix (a portfolio performance reporting software solution for advisors) provides a detailed reference for the different methods of calculating performance, why the various methods can produce substantially different return results (especially when there are substantial cash flows in/out of the portfolio), and some of the pros and cons of each method.

Ultimately, the reality is that there is no “right” choice for how to compute performance – because the “right” methodology actually varies depending on the context in which it’s being used – but advisors should be familiar with the different methods, and when they are most appropriate, so they can adequately defend their choices, and identify performance reporting software solutions that are capable of providing the return calculations they need.

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In the investment world, it’s common to discuss average rates of return, both in a backward-looking fashion (e.g., to report investment results), and in a more forward-looking manner (e.g., to project the average growth rate of investments for funding future goals in retirement planning software). However, the reality is that because returns are linked to each other – the return in one year increases or decreases the available wealth to compound in the subsequent year – it’s not sufficient to simply determine an “average” return by adding up all the historical returns and dividing by how many there are.

Instead of this traditional “arithmetic mean” approach to calculating an average, in the case of investment returns, the proper way to calculate average returns is with a geometric mean, that takes into account the compounding effects of a series of volatile returns over time. Which is important, because in practice the geometric average return is never as high as its arithmetic mean counterpart, due to the fact that volatility always produces some level of “volatility drag”, which can be estimated by subtracting ½ of the investment’s variance (standard deviation squared) from its arithmetic return.

Fortunately, the reality is that most investment returns, as commonly discussed by financial advisors, are already reported as geometric returns, typically stated as either a Compound Average Growth Rate (CAGR), an annualized return, or some similar label. Which means, intended or not, most financial advisors already project future wealth values in a retirement plan using the (proper) geometric return assumption.

However, the variance drain on a sequence of volatile returns still matters when financial advisors use Monte Carlo analysis, which by design actually projects sequences of random volatile returns (based on the probability that they will occur) to determine the outcome of particular retirement strategies. Because the fact that volatility drag is already part of a Monte Carlo analysis means that the return assumption plugged into a Monte Carlo projection should actually be the (higher) arithmetic return, and not the investment’s long-term compound average growth rate. Otherwise, the impact of volatility drag is effectively counted twice, which can understate long-term returns and overstate the actual risk of the prospective retirement plan!

The good news is that some Monte Carlo software tools, recognizing that most financial advisors report returns using the industry-standard geometric averages, already adjusts advisor-inputted return assumptions up to their arithmetic mean counterparts. However, not all Monte Carlo software automatically makes such adjustments. Of course, in many cases, financial advisors may wish to use lower return assumptions in today’s environment, given above-average market valuations and below-average yields. Nonetheless, advisors should be cognizant of whether they are unwittingly entering lower-than-intended return assumptions into their Monte Carlo retirement projections, compounding geometric returns in a manner that double-counts the impact of volatility drag!

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Good diversification is a staple of financial planning advice, though the principle long pre-dates financial planners. From the aphorism “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”, to Talmudic texts from 3,000 years ago directing people to split their wealth evenly between cash, real estate, and business, the virtue of limiting exposure to risk from diversification is an “accepted truth”.

Except the reality is that, when you look to those who achieve the greatest wealth or have the greatest impact, virtually none of them ever diversify… or at least, not throughout most of their years. After all, if Bill Gates had “just” diversified into the S&P 500 after Microsoft IPO’ed, he’d have barely 1/40^th of the wealth he does today. In fact, most of those on the list of the richest billionaires are people in their 60s, 70s, or 80s, who have held a concentrated interest in their businesses for nearly their entire lives. Like the redwood tree, they waited a very, very long time before branching out… and as a result, were able to grow the tallest.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that diversification is always bad. Most “trees” are actually short bushes and shrubs, that grow just a few feet tall, but are still able to broaden their shoots and leaves enough to grow healthy. In the investing context, it’s the equivalent of a person who diligently saves and invests in a portfolio for decades, and retires with “comfortable wealth”.

Still, it’s important to recognize that diversification isn’t literally always the winning strategy, and for those who are young and have a long time horizon, arguably not even a necessary one. In fact, the weakest tree is the Bradford Pear – known for growing a V-shaped trunk, effectively diversifying itself from the start… in a manner that virtually ensures the tree will eventually either collapse under its own weight, or succumb to external forces.

For those who have decided they have “enough”, the satisficing strategy of the bush may be just fine. But for those who decidedly want to generate more wealth or have more impact, perhaps the redwood strategy is underrated after all? In fact, the highest-risk losing strategy may actually be the pear tree strategy of trying to have it both ways at once!

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Regulators around the world require financial advisors to assess their clients’ risk tolerance to determine if an investment is suitable for them before recommending it. For the obvious reason that taking more risk than one can tolerate will potentially lead to untenable losses. And even if the investment bounces back, an investor who loses more money than he/she can tolerate in the near term may sell in a panic at the market bottom, and miss out on that subsequent recovery.

Yet the reality is that many investors end up owning portfolios that are inconsistent with their risk tolerance, and it’s only in bear markets that they seem to “realize” the problem (which unfortunately leads to problem-selling). Which raises the question: why is it that investors don’t mind owning mis-aligned and overly risky portfolios until the moment of market decline?

The key is to recognize that investors do not always properly perceive the risks of their own investments. And it’s not until the investor’s perceived risk exceeds his/her risk tolerance that there’s a compulsion to make a (potentially ill-timed) investment change.

Yet the fact that investors may dissociate their perceptions of risk from the portfolio’s actual risk also means there’s a danger than the investor will misperceive the portfolio risk and want to sell (or buy more) even if the portfolio is appropriately aligned to his/her risk tolerance. In other words, it’s not enough to just ensure that the investors have portfolios consistent with their risk tolerance (and risk capacity); it’s also necessary to determine whether they’re properly perceiving the amount of risk they’re taking.

And as any experienced advisor has likely noticed, not all investors are equally good at understanding and properly perceiving the risks they’re taking. Some are quite good at perceiving risk and maintaining their composure through market ups and downs. But others have poor “risk composure”, and are highly prone to misperceiving risks (and thus tend to make frequently-ill-timed portfolio changes!).

Which means in the end, it’s necessary to not only assess a client’s risk tolerance, but also to determine their risk composure. Unfortunately, at this point no tools exist to measure risk composure – beyond recognizing that clients whose risk perceptions vary wildly over time will likely experience challenges staying the course in the future. But perhaps it’s time to broaden our understanding – and assessment – of risk composure, as in the end it’s the investor’s ability to maintain their composure that really determines whether they are able to effectively stay the course!

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Historically, socially responsible investing (SRI) has been about a fundamental decision: whether to hold a “traditional” diversified portfolio, or to screen out companies for various environmental, social, or governance (ESG) criteria in order to meet an SRI mandate. The end result has been an endless debate about whether a portfolio that used ESG screens will subsequently produce returns that are better, worse, or the same as the traditional portfolio.

Yet the reality is that an SRI approach doesn’t have to be a choice between traditional portfolio investing or using ESG screens. An alternative approach is to try to shape the stocks in a traditional portfolio to better adhere to an SRI mandate, by leveraging the proxy voting and shareholder engagement process to steer the company’s management itself in a more SRI-focused direction.

In this guest post, Justina Lai and Ria Boner of Wetherby Asset Management share how they implemented an ESG shareholder engagement initiative within their own advisory firm, leveraging the outside resources of an external non-profit called “As You Sow” that works with institutions (including advisors) to mobilize shareholder resolutions.

The end result of their ESG shareholder engagement initiative was a deeper engagement with clients themselves, for what was ultimately a fairly modest financial and logistical cost for the firm. However, because there are specific requirements that must be met for clients to vote proxies, including owning individual securities directly, affirming their ownership, and delegating proxy voting authority to a third party, advisory firms must be certain to implement a proper process to ensure their shareholder engagement efforts with clients are successful!

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As financial advisors increasingly adopt ETFs, the wholesale shift from actively managed mutual funds to passive investment vehicles is driving more inflows to ETF providers like Vanguard and Blackrock and State Street and than all other mutual fund families combined… and leading mutual fund companies into a mad scramble to figure out what they have to do to once again appeal to financial advisors.

Yet the reality is that, with the rise of the internet, the fundamental role of the financial advisor themselves is changing. In a world where consumers can purchase virtually any publicly traded investment online themselves, financial advisors are compelled to add value above and beyond “just” bringing third-party mutual fund managers to the table. In fact, an increasing number of financial advisors appear to be “coping” by eliminating third-party managers, and instead becoming the investment portfolio managers themselves.

In this context, the rise of ETFs is not so much about a shift from active to passive, but simply a recognition that when financial advisors build investment portfolios, we prefer to do it using ETFs as our “building blocks”, rather than individual stocks and bonds. Although in point of fact, a recent FPA Trends in Investing Survey revealed that advisors are increasingly building portfolios with ETFs, and stocks, and bonds, and even private equity funds – anything except third-party mutual funds. Which just helps to show how the shift from active to passive is really just a mirage; what’s really occurring is a process where financial advisors are remaining active, but disintermediating mutual fund managers and going hands-on to actively build the portfolio themselves, whether as an independent RIA, or under a Rep-As-PM arrangement in a broker-dealer.

Of course, the caveat is that just as many mutual fund managers have struggled in an increasingly competitive market for alpha to outperform their benchmarks, there’s no indication that individual financial advisors are any better at the process. Which means ultimately, the financial-advisor-as-investment-manager shift itself may be short-lived, as advisors further shift to providing financial planning value outside of the portfolio altogether. But until financial advisors get to the point that the majority of us truly view our value-add as going beyond the investment portfolio – where a bona fide shift to passive investing may gain further traction – the ongoing rise of ETFs will remain less about a shift to passive itself, and more about how financial advisors are defending their own fees by squeezing out the costs of the investment products they use for client portfolios!

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This week is the first that financial advisors must operate under the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule, subject to Impartial Conduct Standards which require that they must give best interests advice, for reasonable compensation, and make no misleading statements. While much has been said about the impact this will have for advisors and their clients, there’s also a not-well-discussed secondary shift that will be triggered by the DoL fiduciary rule, which will impact actively managed mutual funds and their performance in the coming years – in a “surprisingly” positive way.

In this week’s #OfficeHours with @MichaelKitces, my Tuesday 1PM EST broadcast via Periscope, we discuss how the DoL fiduciary rule will likely end out causing an improvement in the return performance of actively managed mutual funds, thanks to the rise of clean shares and a shift in how brokers are compensated for recommending such funds!

Most predictions about the likely impact of the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule is that it will lead to a (continued) decline in the use of actively managed mutual funds, and support the ongoing rise of passive ETFs, thanks to the fiduciary rule’s focus on low cost. But the truth is, that there actually is no requirement in the DoL fiduciary rule that financial advisors eschew actively managed funds and switch to lower cost passive funds. The only real requirement is that if an advisor is going to use an actively managed fund, that there needs to be a clear reason and justification for paying that active manager’s fee. And if you can make the case for the active manager, there’s nothing wrong with using the actively managed fund.

There is, however, a requirement to use the lowest cost share class if multiple share classes of the same fund are available. This is why we’ve seen the launch of T shares and clean shares – which either pay a uniform 2.5% upfront commission and 0.25% trails, or eliminate commissions entirely with the broker-dealer then wrapping a levelized commission around the whole fund or account. And this matters, because mutual funds currently have to report their performance net of commissions and broker compensation. But as broker-dealers shift to being compensated by levelized commissions outside of the funds (even if the consumer still pays a 1% fee via the broker-dealer equivalent to the 1% trail in a C share), the mutual fund itself will no longer have to count the broker’s compensation against their own performance!

And this is important because a lot of mutual fund managers have not been underperforming by the amount of the manager’s fee, but instead, they’ve been underperforming because of the drag of the broker’s commission compensation. Which means, “suddenly”, we’re going to start seeing the average actively managed mutual fund begin to improve on its performance… starting this week, with the rollout of the DoL fiduciary rule (and the rapidly rising adoption of clean shares in particular). Not because mutual fund managers are necessarily managing any differently or better, but simply because they’re no longer paying broker compensation out of their own performance track records! Ironically, this may even handicap RIA performance reporting relative to brokers, given that brokers typically point to mutual fund performance (which will not include the broker-dealer’s level commission payout) instead of account performance, whereas advisors in an RIA that want to market GIPS-compliant performance track records will still have to follow specific rules requiring a full accounting for fees.

In the end, this shift may still result in a roughly-similar total cost to consumers – whether it’s a 1% AUM fee, a 1% commission, or a 1% broker-dealer payout wrapped around clean shares – but the net result nonetheless is that with a shift to clean shares, reported performance for actively managed mutual funds is going to start looking better. Which means in a few years, we may suddenly be talking about how much better actively managed mutual funds are doing again. But it won’t be because “the pendulum swinging from passive to active”… or because that’s when the Fed started accelerating their rate increases… or whatever else happens economically from here. It will be because DoL fiduciary reconfigured how brokers get paid, reducing the need for 12b-1 fees, reducing the expense ratio of actively managed mutual funds, and improving the reported performance of the mutual fund itself!

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Historically, different financial advisors operated different business models depending on their industry channel – RIAs managed investment portfolios, while wirehouses sold proprietary products and securities from their inventory, and independent broker-dealers sold third-party investment products. Accordingly, asset managers and product manufacturers aligned their investment wholesalers to those channels, with one for wirehouses, another for independent broker-dealers, and a third for the independent RIA community. The challenge, though, is that as the advisor value proposition evolves, along with industry business models, and the regulatory environment, the “traditional” industry channels are breaking down as a way to segment financial advisors!

In this week’s #OfficeHours with @MichaelKitces, my Tuesday 1PM EST broadcast via Periscope, we discuss, from the investment wholesaler perspective, the four different types of financial advisors that have emerged, how they differ based on client approach and value proposition, and how wholesalers can best add value to these different types of advisors!

The key issue is to recognize that financial advisors tend to have fundamentally different ways in which we frame our own value proposition, and approach client situations, that are no longer necessarily defined by industry channel. And this matters, because when companies with their own wholesalers are trying to reach advisors, the ways in which an advisor approaches their clients and define their own value proposition heavily impacts what that advisor will and will not see as valuable from their wholesalers!

For instance, some advisors taking a very financial planning-centric approach to clients, while others are more investment-centric. And when it comes to delivering value to clients, some are more advice-centric, and others are more product-centric. Thee various combinations result in four categories of financial advisors: (1) fee-for-service financial planners; (2) investment managers; (3) needs-based sellers; and, (4) asset gatherers.

From the perspective of the wholesaler, it is crucial to recognize that each of these segments receives different value from a wholesaler, and demands different types of products and services. Because if an advisor is an asset gatherer, they are going to want to see a product that can easily help them gather assets… but if they are needs-based sellers, they will want planning strategies and sales ideas… and if they are an investment manager, they will want products that they can manage to demonstrate their own expertise (without outsourcing to other active managers!)… and if an advisor is a fee-for-service financial planner, they will want solutions that help them simplify investment management to free up time to service clients and focus on planning. Thus, investment managers (which might be an RIA or a Rep-As-PM at a broker-dealer) tend to use stocks, bonds, and ETFs, but asset gatherers (which might be RIA or at a broker-dealer) are more likely to use multiple TAMPs and SMA, and fee-for-service financial planners (usually RIAs) will typically just use one TAMP for all of their assets and be uninterested in individual investment products at all!

The bottom line, though, is simply to recognize that the whole advisory industry is in the midst of reorienting itself, and trying to segment financial advisors by wirehouse, broker-dealer, and RIA industry channel no longer works. Advisors are reinventing their value propositions and where they focus, while DoL fiduciary further forces firms to re-draw their lines and tech innovation accelerates these trends. Which means, if wholesalers want to reach financial advisors and add value to them, wholesalers need to pay attention to the four different types of financial advisors!

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In today’s increasingly competitive landscape for advisory firms, financial advisors are looking for any way they can to differentiate. Whether it’s their experience and credentials, specialization or depth of services, or simply the sheer size of the firm, based on its assets under management. After all, the reality is that – justified or not – a sizable reported AUM does imply a certain level of credibility and represents a form of social proof (the firm “must” be good, or it wouldn’t have gotten so much AUM, right!?).

As a result of this trend, though, advisory firms are increasingly pushing the line in counting – or potentially, over-counting – their stated assets under management. Which is important, because not only is overstating AUM a potential form of fraudulent advertising, but the SEC has very explicit rules to determine what should be counted as AUM (or not) for regulatory purposes.

Specifically, the SEC states in its directions for Form ADV Part 1 that regulatory AUM should only include securities portfolios for which the advisor provides continuous and regular supervisory or management services. And while most financial advisors today are regularly working with clients regarding their investment securities, not all advisors are necessarily providing “continuous and regular” services on their client accounts. In fact, if the advisor doesn’t have direct authority to implement client trades (either with discretion or after the client accepts the advisor’s recommendation), it’s virtually impossible to include the account as part of regulatory AUM.

The greater challenge, though, is that the increasingly common offering of comprehensive financial planning services – where advisors provide holistic financial planning advice on all of a client’s net worth – does not mean the advisor can claim all of those assets as regulatory AUM. In fact, most of the time the advisor should not include outside 401(k) plans and other non-managed assets that were advised upon as part of the financial plan, nor the value of brokerage accounts holding mutual funds and various types of annuities (unless the advisor truly provide ongoing management services), nor TAMP or SMA assets (unless the advisor retains the discretionary right to hire/fire the manager and reallocate to another one). In fact, even having discretion over an account doesn’t automatically ensure it being counted as regulatory AUM, particularly if it’s a passive buy-and-hold account, unless the advisor can actually substantiate that monitoring and due diligence is occurring outside of any ad-hoc or periodic client review meetings!

Fortunately, for advisors who want to report some number representing the total scope of their advice – including the amount of assets that don’t count as regulatory AUM – it is permissible to report on Assets Under Advisement (AUA) in the advisor’s marketing and in Part 2 of Form ADV, as long as the advisor can document and substantiate the calculation process. But the fact that it’s permissible to report both AUM and also a (typically large) AUA amount doesn’t change the fact that, when reporting regulatory AUM itself, it’s crucial to report the right number!

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In November of 2016, a joint 18-month study from the State Street Center for Applied Research and the CFA Institute, which combined 200 in-depth interviews with global industry leaders and a survey of 3,300 “investment professionals”, was released, and claimed to have discovered “the hidden variable of [organizational] performance”. Dubbed “Phi”, the research suggested that a combination of the motivational forces of Purpose, Habits, and Incentives was associated with superior organizational outcomes; specifically, the results showed that a one-point increase in Phi was associated with 28% greater odds of excellent organizational performance, 55% greater odds of excellent client satisfaction, and 57% greater odds of excellent employee engagement.

In this guest post, Derek Tharp – our new Research Associate at Kitces.com, and a Ph.D. candidate in the financial planning program at Kansas State University – analyzes the Phi study and delves deeper into exactly what it is, how it is measured, and what conclusions should (and shouldn’t) be drawn from this study.

Because while the researchers did find a statistically significant relationship between Phi (as measured by self-reported purpose, habits, and incentives), and organizational outcomes, client satisfaction, and employee engagement, it’s not entirely clear what the results actually prove.

The challenge, in part, is that the study itself didn’t actually evaluate organizational performance, client satisfaction, or employee engagement! Instead, the researchers evaluated self-reported assessments of organizational performance, client satisfaction, and employee engagement, and compared them to self-reported statistics on Phi (for the entire organization). And this distinction is meaningful, because it isn’t exactly clear that employees make valid or reliable assessments of company-wide motivational forces, nor the entire company’s organizational performance, client satisfaction, or employee engagement — and especially when these employees may not actually even know if clients’ goals are being met (how “organizational performance” was defined), whether clients or satisfied, or whether other employees within a large multinational financial services firm are actually even engaged!

In addition, there’s the fundamental challenge that a correlation between two data points doesn’t necessarily prove causation either. In other words, the fact that high-performing organizations also report higher Phi doesn’t mean the higher Phi caused the better results. Perhaps organizations that are already outperforming simply attract more motivated employees (which means the causality goes the other direction).

In the end, the Phi study did ask some interesting questions and set out with some lofty ambitions to evaluate the impact of motivational forces – a question that is admittedly not easy to study. But until further research can tie Phi to actual outcomes or provide evidence that the self-reported measures are assessing something meaningful in a valid and reliable way, then the conclusions we can actually draw from the Phi research are limited.

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