For wealthy families, sometimes managing finances can be more daunting than making money in the first place. The Average Investors portfolio was flat to down over the first ten years of this millennium. The S&P returns from 2000 to 2010 show a lost decade in which the equity market oscillated between elated and apocalyptic, only to settle around ambivalent. Volatility, and the uncertainty that comes with it, only increased in 2011 and as a result wealthy families have begun asking important questions with greater regularity. In the wake of these recent developments, we will outline some of the common mistakes that wealthy families make and what they can do to avoid these mistakes moving forward. Understanding where ones family wealth is vulnerable to missteps can be the first important move for those looking to relieve some of the mental stress caused by their finances.
The main problem with reactionary investing is that in its lack of process, the relationship between each investment is not sufficiently considered because each decision is made in isolation from the next. Investing in reaction to opportunities causes investors to very quickly lose sight of the forest for the trees. An investment portfolio is much more than the sum of its individual parts. For example, the way in which investments interact (correlate) with one another is almost as important as the returns on the individual investments themselves. Specifically, strategic investing can take into consideration investors: Ability and willingness to take on risk. Return objectives, in light of personal, familial and philanthropic goals. Time horizon, as a result of age and the ages of successors. Tax consequences Legal restrictions.
Liquidity and income requirements Unique circumstances, arising from the infinite characteristics which distinguish individuals from one another.
Unfortunately, many individuals and families do not consider all these issues before investing their money and end up being disappointed or frustrated by the results.
A good IPS is not a luxury it is a necessity. Clients need to formalize their risk-return objectives and investment professionals need to understand exactly where their clients are coming from. Without having a detailed, practical and strategic discussion before investing, client and advisor may as well be tethered together in a forest without a map for their entire relationship. The valuable information contained in the IPS should not be flushed out over the course of years. It needs to be discussed at the outset between client and advisor and used as the basis for asset allocation. Clients, for their part, should demand this service from their advisors. We call the IPS The Investment Constitution.
Many families manage their finances in a way that is analogous to them building a house with only craftspeople and no professional oversight. General contractors, project managers, architects, designers all these roles are absent in the building of their financial estate. Their investment managers have insufficient oversight and are disconnected from one another. These families would be better served if they had an advisor who would monitor the performance of individual investment managers to make sure each manager is performing according to their mandate and in a way which complements the others. In situations where a manager does not perform as expected, this advisor could recognize the situation and guide the client in a better direction.
For example, many investments which are recommended to clients are in-house, so the advisor is also in essence a salesperson for their firm. Even if there are dozens of products investment advisors can offer, clients cannot receive customized, objective advice with product-based service. In contrast to a professional who sells products, an advisor who offers a process will not be inclined to impose investments onto his or her clients. Instead, the advisor will, along with the client, develop guidelines and a philosophy for investing which will frame the investment decisions over time. The range of options available to such an advisors client is as infinite as the advisors willingness to research. Clients who are served products from a list are ultimately receiving a service designed for somebody else (or no one in particular). Processbased investment consulting, however, involves the creation of an investment mandate in accordance with each clients particular needs.
4. Diversification
Limiting Value at Risk as well as Volatility Most clients correctly understand that diversification among investments can decrease the riskiness of a portfolio. When most people think about diversification, however, they associate it with minimizing the volatility of a portfolio for a given level of returns. Diversification is arguably more important, however, for reducing the value at risk of a portfolio - the risk of permanently losing capital1 - rather than reducing volatility. Limiting volatility is very important for clients who, understandably, do not feel comfortable seeing the value of their investments decrease over a short period of time. We all need to sleep at night, and highly volatile returns certainly do not help most people get their rest.
Value at risk is often described as the worst case scenario for a portfolio.
Permanently losing capital, however, constitutes a different, more concerning, level of risk. Whereas some people are willing to sacrifice consistency for higher returns, no one, in their right mind, is comfortable irreparably harming their savings. Diversification needs to focus not merely on limiting volatility to a range within which the investor can feel comfortable, but, more importantly, limiting the likelihood of some extreme negative event which can irrevocably harm a portfolio and its beneficiaries. Asset Class Diversification Diversification requires much more than just holding a large number of investments in a portfolio. In order to benefit from diversification lowering volatility and decreasing the chance of permanently losing money, for a given investment return investors should diversify across asset classes. Common asset classes include: large-cap equities, real estate, investment-grade bonds, market-neutral hedge funds, private equity,
distressed debt and many others, including domestic and international versions of each. Although investments within asset classes tend to correlate highly with one another, investments among asset classes tend to have lower correlations.2 This relationship (correlation) among the investments is what determines the riskiness of a portfolio for a given level of return. For example, if the stock market takes a turn for the worse, it is useful to have an investment which will increase in value in such a situation and offset the losses on the rest of a portfolio. Over time, investors who are properly diversified receive what is often called the only free lunch in finance a higher level of returns for a given amount of risk. Most people have exposure to too few asset classes and are missing out on this free lunch. For example, the traditional 60% equity 40% bond portfolio diversifies across only two asset classes.
2
If two investments correlate highly with one another, it means that they will change in value similarly as events unfold. If two investments have low or negative correlations, it means that they will react more differently as events unfold
Moreover, there is often an overlap between the equity and bonds in the portfolio, which happens when both the equity and the bonds are in the same type of companies (i.e. large-cap North American). This overlap mitigates the benefits of diversifying because the two asset classes will react similarly as events unfold. For this reason, most institutional investors have moved away from the traditional allocation over the past two decades by investing in alternative asset classes such as hedge funds, private equity, real estate, infrastructure and distressed securities. Private investors who are able to do the same would be well served to do so. Preparing for the Unprecedented Individuals were often told by their investment advisors during The Great Recession that extreme negative returns were acceptable because the events of the time were unforeseeable. The whole point of diversification, however, is that investors should be protected from the unforeseeable.
History is constantly unfolding in ways which are new and filled with uncertainty. One of the most important investing maxims is therefore: the one thing we know for sure is that we do not know what the future will bring. An investment advisor should understand that the future can bring with it unprecedented and unforeseeable events. Only with this understanding in mind can he or she craft a well-armored, properly diversified portfolio. It was the lack of proper diversification across the investment gamut, combined with the financial leverage employed by managers too sure of their expected returns, that led to such extensive financial losses between 2006 and 2009. Many investment managers modeled their portfolios based on historical information, and were not prepared for the unprecedented. Many of them did not institute sufficient safeguards in their portfolios, and suffered tremendous losses because of the unforeseeable.
Good investors must always approach their process with wariness and humility, expecting the unexpected and preparing for worst-case scenarios.
The legal status required to invest in alternative investments, such as being categorized as Accredited Investors, who must have investable assets of $5 million or more.
Alternative Investments
Investors can be compensated for a number of reasons: (i) the different types of risk, (ii) illiquidity and (iii) duration. Since high net worth investors, generally, have more flexibility on liquidity and duration than average investors have, they should get disproportionate compensation. Unfortunately, since many high net worth clients are not provided with sufficient access to alternative investments, they are insufficiently compensated for having more flexible time horizons. This time horizon flexibility is one of the reasons why university endowments, which have unlimited time horizons, have been able to maintain large pools of alternatives and outperform other investors.
Below is a comparison of the returns from all endowments with those of the Ivy League Endowments. From 1994 to 2005, Ivy Leaguers outperformed other endowments by over three percent per year. To put this outperformance into perspective, on a portfolio with a starting value of $10 million, this superior return would yield an additional $12 million in wealth
Table 3 over ten years compared to the S&P 500. Compared to the performance of the average
65% equity 35% bond portfolio,3 the return would yield an additional $19 million in wealth Return decomposition over 10 years.
Year 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 Mean All Return Bench 5.8 -1.1 16.1 16.2 19.7 16.6 21.5 21.4 18.6 20.9 10.4 15.8 20.2 15.9 -2.9 -8.9 -4.5 -12.1 4.6 0.2 17.3 11.3 13.1 6.1 11.7% 8.5% Ivy League Return Bench 8.5 -0.1 16.4 17.2 24.4 19.6 24.6 21.4 19.1 21.0 11.9 16.2 26.8 24.1 2.4 -7.3 -0.8 -11.5 9.1 0.2 19.5 10.0 16.9 6.9 14.9% 9.8% Private Return Bench 3.4 -2.1 16.0 16.2 18.7 16.5 20.7 22.0 18.8 21.2 9.7 16.1 18.5 14.2 -4.2 -9.5 -5.4 -12.4 3.7 0.2 16.6 11.9 12.2 6.1 10.7% 8.4% Large endowment Return Bench 3.3 -1.9 16.5 16.5 18.9 16.7 20.8 22.2 18.5 21.3 10.0 16.3 21.0 16.0 -4.7 -9.5 -5.4 -12.4 3.3 0.0 17.2 11.6 13.0 6.3 11.0% 8.6%
Re
Endowment returns are from the National Association of College and The Ivy League Business Officers (NACUBO). Thetime, allocated areturns for equities, f school endowments, over this same period of benchmark real estate, and cash are the annual yields from the Standard & Poors particularly high proportion of their portfolios to alternative investments. Case-Shiller index, and the thr Lehman US Aggregate bond index, the treasury rate, respectively. The benchmark returns for alternative asse weighted averages of the one-year returns for private equity and ventu investments reported in the VentureXpert database and hedge fund ret in the Hennessee Hedge Fund Index. 3 The 65 percent S&P 500/35 percent Barclays Government/Credit Index portfolio representsat least 10 years of total retu Notes: Based on data for schools which reported what an investor endowment returns and benchmark returns are presented for six samp would earn from a 65/35 investment in these equity and fixed income market indices, rebalanced annually. This portfolio is considered more Large and would have returned 9.5% over the same period. top quartile of endowment traditional endowment denotes schools in the and High SAT denotes schools in the top quartile of SAT score in th 1992. The Private, Large endowment, and High SAT categorie schools in the Ivy League. For each subset Return indicates the val average endowment return, and Bench indicates benchmark returns allocations of each group of endowments to five asset classes: equities real estate, alternatives, and other. The benchmark return is calculated return of asset class indices weighted by the percentage of total assets end of the previous fiscal year to each asset class.
Sources:
The graph below compares the alternative asset allocation of endowments under different categories. The best performing endowments, those of the Ivey Leagues, tend to invest more heavily in alternative investments.
Figure 3 Alternative asset allocation by school type and year (median fraction of total assets invested in alternative asset classes, including hedge funds, venture capital, and private equity)
funds.
National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO). Based on data for schools which reported at least 10 years of return data between 1992 and 2005. Large endowment denotes schools in the top quartile of endowment for Alternative investments are likely one driver of outperformancesize these exceptional in 1992, and High SAT denotes schools in the top quartile of SAT score in the sample in 1992. The Private, Large endowment, and High SAT categories Even if we cannot determine the degree to which alternatives account for their superior exclude schools in the Ivy League.
Source: Note:
returns, it is telling that the fund managers who form, arguably, the most successful group of investors in the world, choose to allocate higher proportions of their assets under management to alternative investments. Wealthy families would be well served to learn from these endowment fund managers and, in doing so, strive for access to a far greater range of 26 investment opportunities than they currently have - particularly in the realm of alternative investments.
6. Performance Evaluation
There are many different numbers used to evaluate investment performance. Annualized return; IRR; cumulative return in percentage terms and cumulative return in dollar terms are some of the more popular measures. The general rule of thumb is that certain performance measurements are better than others, but no single performance measurement can paint a complete picture.
Time-weighted return is a misnomer because, as you may have noticed, the annualized return is not weighted at all. It is just the average return, without putting any additional weight on certain years. In the above example, the annualized return is: (12.0% + 13.0% + 7.0% + 15.0% 9.0%) 5 years = 7.6% per year Of course, this number says very little about the wealth accrued to the client because it doesnt take into account the contributions to the fund and distributions to the investor. Most significantly, the investor contributed $7,500 right before the manager had the worst annual return of -9.0%. The IRR (money-weighted return), in contrast, takes into consideration the decisions made to either contribute or distribute financial capital. See the same chart below, but with IRR calculated: Annual Return (%) Dollar Gain (Loss) Money Contributed (Distributed) Initial Amount Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 IRR 12.0 13.0 7.0 15.0 -9.0 = 4.18% $1,200 $1,456 $815.92 $2,095.79 ($2,121.09) 0 ($1,000) $1,500 $7,500 0 $11,200 $11,656 $13,971.92 $23,567.71 $21,446.62 $10,000 Portfolio Value
The IRR is a percentage value which explains the way we got from the initial portfolio value to the current portfolio value, taking into consideration all the money taken out of and put into the portfolio along the way. Since most people need to add and subtract cash from their invested assets over time, the IRR does a significantly better job explaining changes in an investors wealth than the annualized return does. Notice that the IRR for the same portfolio is lower in the above example because the IRR takes into consideration the fact that a large contribution was made to the fund right before a large downturn. Most investment advisors are not interested in providing their clients with an IRR as a performance measurement. Providing the IRR requires not only a more complicated calculation but also a log of all transactions into and out of a clients portfolio. Moreover, IRRs can often be less flattering to investment advisors performance than annualized returns are. Despite the resistance to provide an IRR, individuals should insist that their financial advisors provide such a measure in order to get a clear idea of the progression of their wealth over time.
Some of these risk-adjusted return measurements are the Sharpe Ratio, Jensens Alpha, and the Treynor Ratio.
A Reasoned Approach to Performance Evaluation It is integral that clients evaluate their investment professionals based on a combination of factors rather than any one single number. IRR and risk-adjusted performance measurements are useful because they measure some very important aspects of investment performance. However, performance measurement should also be based on: Past instances of permanent losses Duration of positive track record. Word-of-mouth references from current and former clients. Recommendations from trusted financial professionals. Whether the manager can articulate appropriate answers to probing questions. In the end, IRR, risk-adjusted returns, and other performance factors should all be considered by clients looking to get a comprehensive understanding of a financial professionals performance. Clients should insist on the availability of all these important pieces of information so that they can make informed decisions.
Concluding Remarks
Although wealthy families face a lot of complexity in trying to approach their investments sensibly and creatively, implementing a few focused tips, like the ones discussed in this paper, can make a great deal of difference over time. The role of an investment consultant should be to help make his or her clients better investors by providing impartial advice and explaining where clients may be making costly mistakes. For their part, wealthy individuals and families who are not completely satisfied with their investment process should hold their investment professionals to a higher standard wherever possible. We believe that having an independent investment consultant is the best way for high net worth individuals and families to avoid the mistakes mentioned in this paper.
Prime Quadrant is an investment research and consulting firm for high-net-worth individuals and families based in Canada. We advise on and facilitate access to investments across all asset classes, with particular expertise in alternative investments. We act as an outsourced Chief Investment Officer for high net worth investors who are looking to eliminate conflicts of interest in their wealth management and diversify across the full breadth of global investment opportunities.