"Annual rebalance" refers to the process of adjusting or readjusting one's investment portfolio once a year. This usually involves selling or buying different assets to restore the original desired allocation. It allows investors to maintain their desired risk level and ensure their investments stay in line with their long-term goals.
Full definition
If you're interested in managing your own investments, consider a simple buy and hold ETF portfolio
with annual rebalancing.
I say «relatively» simple because managing multiple systems requires more then
annual rebalancing of a portfolio.
I
think annual rebalancing probably makes the most sense, as I doubt that most investors have the inclination or discipline to monitor and adjust their allocations more frequently.
For annual rebalancing, the year - to - date return is calculated with the assumption that the portfolio is perfectly in balance at the beginning of the year.
Pick something that's allowed by your plan (
like annual rebalancing) or simply opt for the automatic rebalancing feature, if available.
Don't forget that mutual funds also charge either front end or back end loads which also reduce the annual returns and can play havoc with
annual rebalancing at least in the short term (5 to 10 years after purchase).
A quick backtest of this screen from 2002 to present with a one year
annual rebalancing period showed that $ 100 invested evenly in the stocks selected by the Graham - Dodd - Shiller PE10 Screen grew to $ 344 today compared to just $ 104 for the S&P 500 over the same period.
Faber also encourages momentum timing strategies within these assets, but for direct comparison all charts here show
simple annual rebalancing just like all of the other portfolios.
That paper demonstrates a purely
mechanical annual rebalancing of stocks meeting Graham's net current asset value criterion generated a mean return between 1970 and 1983 of «29.4 % per year versus 11.5 % per year for the NYSE - AMEX Index.»
It will be rebalanced annually, and companies no longer meeting the net / net criteria will remain in the index
until annual rebalancing.
Since 2004, this portfolio has returned 178.7 %, outperforming the market by 48.8 % using its
optimal annual rebalancing period and 20 stock portfolio size.
Annual rebalancing yielded no further improvement in the annualized return or Sharpe ratio, but reduced the maximum drawdown to 12.1 % and lowered the beta to 0.20.
For instance, the return in 2008 of the Life Stage 70 + 7Twelve portfolio (designed for investors at or beyond the age of 70) was -9.2 % if
using annual rebalancing.
I've recently learned about Harry Browne's «permanent portfolio», which is a very simple asset allocation that
requires annual rebalancing.
Second, when we try monthly, quarterly, and semi-annual rebalancing, we increase index turnover but find no appreciable return advantage
over annual rebalancing.
A quick backtest of these top 1 % employment growth stocks shows that these stocks realized a negative 5.93 % annualized return over the past 14 years
with annual rebalancing.
Bradley says a
simple annual rebalance is fine for most people: that's usually enough to keep your risk level consistent.
It's a pretty easy sell when they see the savings in fees and then you add on the benefit of being able to sell the ETF at any time for a small broker fee ($ 10)
for annual rebalancing or cashflow needs (mostly applies to retirees).
You can make a case for any of these regimens, but I
think annual rebalancing (generally near the end of the year so you can combine it with any tax - related investment moves) makes sense for most people.
This boring, two holding portfolio (Barclay's Aggregate Bond Index, S&P 500,
annual rebalance) has had positive returns for nine straight years.
With 5 percent in gold bullion and 5 percent in gold mining stocks, along with
an annual rebalancing, investors could potentially offset their losses in other holdings.
Any thoughts on what
an annual rebalance into a 10 or 20 year slow moving bond bear market would do to a 60/40 mix?
To my mind there are three stages of improvement from the default 60:40 total market portfolio and a fixed rate inflation adjusted withdrawal rate with
annual rebalancing.