Month: January 2019

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen

Many thanks for all the replies I received to my last weekly. I collected some pretty detailed answers and it seems there are some well-informed people among my readers. Thank you very much!

Let me give you a somewhat different perspective on what may signify long-term investing. I am deliberately simplifying wherever possible to make this easy to read..

Now, the biggest challenge in answering my last week’s question seemed to be the definition of “long-term”, which I believe represents one of the most important factors in managing pension fund assets.

One may argue that as a cohort, pension fund managers can probably be considered the ultimate pros, at least that is what they ought to be and a pension fund – by definition – needs to be invested very, very long-term which means pension fund managers need to find and concentrate on very long-term investments.

Here in Liechtenstein, same is true for Switzerland, employees usually follow a three-pillar pension saving scheme. Let me elaborate quickly:

Pillar one is a compulsory and defined benefit pension scheme by the government. Contributions are taken off any salary at any time during an employee’s working life. Employees know exactly what they are getting according to the number of years contributing. Pillar one only covers basic living costs it is capped but also has a floor in order to assure that every citizen, no matter of his/her contribution can rely on a minimal pension income after retirement. Investment risk is born by the government, i.e. tax payer.
Pillar two is in most cases structured as a defined benefit pension scheme. It is compulsory as well, however not organised by the government but rather by employers. Depending on how much an employee can contribute during his/her working life and depending on the investment style and long-term performance of the pension fund manager, the final pension income may vary, and it does – even big time. Investment risk is born by employees (policy holders),
Pillar three is discretionary and may be organised by employees themselves. Up to a certain amount there are tax benefits for contributors.

The by far largest part of pension scheme money is invested in pillar number one and two. This money is being invested globally and at least sometimes in accordance with the latest academic notion of modern investment principals. The investing process is supervised by local authorities/regulators.

So far so good.

If an employee starts working at the age of 20 and works until the age of 65, which is currently the regular retirement age for male employees in Liechtenstein and Switzerland, the employee contributes 45 years of monthly pension fund premiums or “savings”. The savings need to be invested and allocated in a way to keep returns as high as possible and volatility over the entire investment period as low as possible. The investment period is defined by the years any employee contributes, i.e. in our example 45 years plus the years the employee lives after retirement and receives his/her pension income. If a male employee lives until the age of 85, hence the investment period amounts to 45 years plus 20 years and therefore 65 years in total. In our example after retirement and during the last 20 years of the employee’s life, the employee now starts consuming the accumulated returns and savings.

Most of the answers I have received to my last weekly were not taking that sort of ultra long-term investment horizon into consideration. From a behavioural investment point of view this is totally understandable as our mind weighs short-term news and noise higher than long-term considerations. This can be explained psychologically, and research in this field has led to many academic papers and even a Nobel Prize in economics.

However, the quality of a pension fund manager is also (but not only) defined by how strongly he can resist short-term speculation and thus his ability to blank out anything keeping him off the track generating truly tong-term returns for his clients, i.e. pension fund policy holders.

Accordingly, quarterly earnings reports, political turmoil, tweeting politicians and trade wars can not be taken into the equation. A pension fund portfolio needs to be invested in a way that focuses on cash-flow generation over decades. Anything else would be speculation.

Just think about it, a pension fund manager can of course not foresee the future and can neither invest with the current partial U.S. government shut-down, the next financial crisis an equity bull market nor the next recession in mind. The only thing a pension fund manager can do is to use models that calculate potential return needs over the entire investment period taking underlying inflation estimates and development of demographics into the equation and than start to look for investment opportunities that match such return needs, if possible over the entire investment life cycle.

Therefore the positive side of investing really long-term is that pension fund managers don’t really need to consider daily, weekly and quarterly earnings estimates and even micro- and macro-economic comments by analysts. They don’t care about the “longest” U.S. government shut-down because even if it lasts for another few months it is just not long enough to be considered in the investment process. Any equity market crash is only a down-tick on a 65-year chart. Recession-, inflation-, deflation-fears never last 65 years, elected political leaders come and go, regulation and deregulation cycles are shorter than a 65 years investment horizon and thus even trade wars dwindle down to non-events.

Interesting perspective, no?

Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, I will try to find a pension fund manager to discuss my views on pension fund investing and hope to be able to publish a short interview within the upcoming weeks, and I encourage you to send me your feedback as always but please don’t forget (instead of hitting the reply button) to send your messages to:

smk@incrementum.li

Many thanks, indeed!

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen I wish you a great day and weekend.
Kind regards.
Yours truly,

Stefan M. Kremeth
Wealth Management
Incrementum AG