Individual v Institutional Portfolio

QUESTION: Martin, in today’s answer re: Asset Allocation you had mentioned of helping a couple of large funds prepare for what is to come.Was wondering if we regular folks will also be privy to this info at some point and also will we get a heads up when things are getting closer to the Big Event.In an earlier blog you had mentioned something about 2022, will that be a critical time for our savings/economy?

Thank you always for your work.

W

ANSWER: The difficulty in turning around major portfolios is substantially different from a private individual. Often these major portfolios are dominated by real estate and government bond positions in the hundreds of billions of dollars. How to strategically shift such portfolios is highly complicated and it cannot be done on a single phone call. The complexity is significant and the general advice on here is not opposite of recommendations to institutions. How to execute such shifts and when is critical timing.

I have stated many times that you can turn a speedboat on a dime. That is not the case with an aircraft carrier. This is the same difference between a private portfolio and a major institution. They just cannot pick up the phone and yell sell everything at the market! This is substantially a different position altogether.

The advice we provide for a major portfolio shift has to be tailored to the asset allocation mix. We must run timing models on each and every component for selling one aspect can have an adverse impact on other assets classes. It is by no means a simple project.