Close Close
ThinkAdvisor
Fran Kinniry

Financial Planning > Behavioral Finance

Clients Hate This Popular Investing Strategy, Vanguard Researcher Says

X
Your article was successfully shared with the contacts you provided.

“Portfolio diversification helps mitigate the risk of [one’s] losing investments over time,” Fran Kinniry, head of Vanguard Group’s Investment Advisor Research Center, tells ThinkAdvisor in an interview.

Typically, however, clients just don’t get what diversification is for. That makes it “probably a necessary evil. It’s almost a hated strategy because it always makes sure that the portfolio has something that’s in the bottom quartile,” Kinniry says.

Conducting research at Vanguard for 25 years now, Kinniry and his team create empirically based “advisor-friendly” research — as he calls it — to help improve financial advisors’ financial planning skills and deepen their insights, thus achieving better client outcomes.

The Research Center works with both advisors and end clients.

During the interview, in exploring financial planning versus other investing strategies, Kinniry identifies two strategies as “zero-sum games” and one — financial planning — that’s a “positive-sum game.”

Kinniry’s research suggests that behavioral coaching is “likely the single most important service advisors can provide to clients.”

And in the interview, he strongly urges advisors to embrace it.

For starters, coaching can help investors make better choices. Vanguard research shows that the same process and logic that investors instinctively use to choose everything from a toaster to a surgeon simply don’t work when it comes to the investment markets.

Elsewhere in the interview, Kinniry discusses retirement spending and how, through a dynamic distribution strategy, “a small reduction in annual spending” after a big market downturn can make retirees’ money last longer.

Kinniry joined Vanguard in 1997 and for 18 years was global head of portfolio construction. In 2019, he started the Private Investment team, which he helmed.

Prior to Vanguard, he was a partner at Executive Investment Advisors and a portfolio manager at H. Katz Capital Group.

ThinkAdvisor recently interviewed Kinniry, who was speaking by phone from Vanguard headquarters in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

Here’s some of his timely research that advisors should be sure to ponder: “Technology will reduce the time an advisor spends not just on administrative tasks but also on much of what advisors have traditionally defined their value proposition around.”

Following are excerpts from our interview:

THINKADVISOR: You’ve conducted research on the “enduring principles” of diversification and argue that “diversification remains quite commonly misunderstood.” Please explain.

FRAN KINNIRY: Most investors don’t understand why they’re always going to have a poorly performing investment. But the bottom line about diversification is that you try to add assets that have different recurring patterns and different correlations.

Something that may be doing poorly in a one-year, three-year, five-year episode that has similar returns over 10 and 20 years is the exact definition of diversification.

Clients hate [that]. And when they see an underperforming asset, if they’re [investing] on their own, nine times out of 10 they’ll probably sell it.

Diversification is probably a necessary evil. It’s almost a hated strategy because it always makes sure that the portfolio has something that’s in the bottom quartile.

But diversification helps mitigate the risk of losing investments over time.

New research you’ve just released, “Right Mindset, Wrong Market,” shows that “insights gained by investment analysis and evaluations based on past performance fail to produce the desired outcomes when applied to investments.” Please elaborate.

Investors apply the same logic to investing that they apply everywhere else because it works everywhere else. But it doesn’t work in the investment markets. That’s why we see investors trail the markets. It’s because of their own behavior.

We studied industry over industry — restaurants, hotels, universities, surgeons, consumer products — and time after time, there is “persistence.” That is, if you’re in the top category of, say, colleges, you remain there.

If you have a 4-star Michelin restaurant rating, you don’t see that becoming a one-star restaurant.

What process do investors use when researching investing?

Investors apply the same process as if buying a toaster or having knee surgery: They look at the reports and read the rankings.

But if you look at the best asset class over the last five or 10 years, or even the best manager, you don’t see “persistence.” You see cyclicality and regime switching.

Why wouldn’t you want to buy the asset class that outperformed for the last 10 years? A behavioral coach helps investors understand why that natural intuition doesn’t [work] with investing.

Is such coaching done on an ongoing basis?

Yes, it’s a big part of the everyday conversation but also in anxious moments that matter when markets are down. For instance, COVID-19’s occurring or the Silicon Valley Bank’s failing.

That’s when clients call advisors and say, “I want to move my 60/40 portfolio to cash.”

An advisor coaching them to stay the course can add value in a 15-minute phone conversation — one that’s been built on many years of planning and proactive coaching.

One single coaching opportunity could more than justify a lifetime of client advisor fees.

Anxious moments happen almost on a weekly or monthly basis. Something comes up that drives the market up 3% to 5% or down 3% to 5%.

But the market shouldn’t drive your decisions. That’s proven to be an unsuccessful strategy. You [should] only change the portfolio if something changes within the goals, objectives and risk tolerances of the client, not of the markets.

Your “Advisor’s Alpha Guide to Proactive Behavioral Coaching” says that “by focusing on planning, proactivity and positivity, advisors can coach their clients to success.”

How can you add alpha through financial planning versus trying to outperform the market?

Financial-planning alpha is much more probable and much higher than investment alpha.

When an investor hires a financial advisor, it shouldn’t be based on their picking mutual funds or doing tactical allocation. Those have low-probability outcomes and haven’t worked well.

Wealth planning and financial planning have proven to have high probability outcomes.

Planning and behavioral coaching add value to advice, not picking funds or trying to guess where the market is going.

Jack Bogle [Vanguard's founder] and his [case] for indexing showed just how hard it is to outperform [by stock picking]. Indexing outperforms 70% to 80% on the stock and bond sides.

Tactical allocation and picking mutual funds have really underperformed the market.

These are zero-sum games and are very difficult.

Why is financial planning much better?

Financial planning is a positive-sum game, with [situation-appropriate] drawdowns, rebalancing and estate planning, all of which are tax efficient.

They have a high probability of success and are in the advisor’s control, removing luck from the equation.

They’re systematic alpha strategies that don’t require luck or hope because they’re mathematical.

How does tax efficiency add alpha?

We know that certain investments are more tax efficient than others.

So by putting the tax efficient in taxable accounts and the tax inefficient in tax-deferred accounts, you rebalance tax efficiency and can really add alpha.

You recommend behavioral coaching for clients. But many advisors dismiss that. They just want to focus on the numbers. Your thoughts?

I would say that’s where 60% or 70% of advisors were 20 years ago. Today, it’s where about 5% or 10% are.

We’ve seen advisors migrate to financial planning, wealth planning and behavioral coaching as the key tools in the advisor’s tool kit.

Today, 80%, or more, are experts in financial planning and behavioral coaching.

They realize that all the number stuff is largely commoditized and has low probability of adding value to client portfolios.

Your research finds that “a small reduction in annual spending can preserve a [retirement] portfolio after there’s been a much larger market shock.” Please explain.

It’s because of the wealth effect and how people actually behave.

If, say, you were taking out 4% [from the portfolio] and the market drops, the portfolio’s value drops.

So if you continue to take out the same amount of money, you’re taking out a larger percentage. That’s going to have big implications to the portfolio’s lasting.

What’s a better way for income distribution, then?

Dynamic distribution, which takes into consideration the volatility of the market and also investor behavior.

It’s spending down a little after a market decline. You can put a floor and a ceiling on it.

I would call the 4% retirement income strategy rule “Generation 1”: You spend 4% grown by inflation.

But that doesn’t really take into account just how volatile the markets are.

No one is going to continue spending 4% grown by inflation if the market is off 50%, as it was in the global financial crisis.

Tell me more about dynamic distribution.

The dynamic distribution strategy is to have a portfolio endure through volatility and match the behavior of spending a little more in good times and spending a little less in bad times — which is the wealth effect.

Our research shows that a portfolio can [generate] a smoother retirement income stream using a dynamic distribution approach, and it will last longer, meaning a lower probability of running out of money.

The fear of running out of money is one of the biggest fears of retirement.

We see retirees’ spending rate [as] constant and steady. But in the last five or six years of one’s life, spending really goes up because of health care costs.

People need to make sure they’re set up well for that last period of their lives.

(Pictured: Fran Kinniry)


NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.