Comments on: How much is rebalancing worth?

By: Stephen Beck

Stephen Beck — Tue, 26 May 2009 22:46:17 +0000

Dear Felix,

You mention that an investor with less than $50K investable dollars should avoid the $100 annual MarketRiders’ fee (annual payment provides a discount on the $9.99 monthly subscription). This insight is spot on and is exactly what we state in our FAQs (http://www.marketriders.com/faq#10) under What Is The Minimum Size of a Portfolio. We provide a direct link to a target date fund which we believe is another good solution for such investors.

Thanks,

Stephen Beck
Co-Founder
http://www.marketriders.com

By: Mitch Tuchman

Mitch Tuchman — Tue, 26 May 2009 00:23:07 +0000

Felix:

Thanks for your post. In fact, we are real believers in rebalancing and we have moved the “state of the art” forward. For example, today’s conversation about rebalancing involves “time-based” rebalancing, i.e. when to rebalance — quarterly, yearly, monthly. We use “event-based” rebalancing by using algorithms to measure how out of balance an ETF, an asset class or an overall portfolio is. When you do this, you get better results from rebalancing because you trigger a rebalancing event at the point in time where it should occur. For example, had someone done “time-based” rebalancing on 9/30/08, and then again on 12/31/08, they would not have gotten the same returns as someone who rebalanced when the market was bottoming in November which is where our system sent alerts.

Our partner Ryan Pfenninger is currently working on a new part of http://www.marketriders.com where one can look at the effects of this on different portfolios.

When David Swensen of Yale writes about rebalancing, its “event-based”, not “time-based” and we believe this is where the community needs to focus the conversation.

Mitch Tuchman, CEO
http://www.marketriders.com

By: Scott Berglund

Scott Berglund — Tue, 19 May 2009 03:07:32 +0000

The more diversified the portfolio, i.e., the lowest aggregate correlations across each pair of assets, the greater the reward for rebalancing. Annual rebalancing should add 100 to 150 basis points of return for a broadly diversified global multi-asset portfolio, but substantially less for just a stock/bond mix.

By: Andrew Taylor

Andrew Taylor — Mon, 18 May 2009 13:38:07 +0000

Dear Felix, it really depends on when you use the model. For example 50% Aust. Accumulation Index 50% Cash from 1970 to 1990 re-balanced at 30 June each year paid slightly under 2% better than shares on their own which, over that period is a serious boatload of money. Of course re-balancing on 30 September brought even better results. Over the last 24 years, however, the share market easily outran the balanced portfolio until quite recently.

By: odograph

odograph — Mon, 18 May 2009 13:16:31 +0000

I seem to remember (1) studies cited at the Bogleheads forum suggesting that rebalancing 1/yr is about optimum, and (2) and that rebalancing never was a close second.

By: fusion

fusion — Mon, 18 May 2009 12:39:58 +0000

The main benefit of rebalancing is risk control – you don’t find yourself taking much more (or less) equity risk than you want.

Rebalancing should not be viewed as adding to returns. Over the long run, stocks outperform bonds. Rebalancing out of stocks hurts returns. The main benefit for returns of rebalancing is when you have two assets with similar performance and imperfect correlation (for example, US and non-US equities over some time periods). Rebalancing can improve returns in this case.

By: James

James — Mon, 18 May 2009 12:13:48 +0000

Watson Wyatt and Mercer have done a lot of research into the benefits of rebalancing for institutional pension funds, although I confess I can’t recall the conclusions – possibly not entirely clear cut then.