Bradley believes that active managers can add value by
making tactical shifts in asset allocation — though not too often, and always within a fairly narrow range.
A passive investor would not
make these tactical shifts; he or she would simply rebalance back to the strategic mix.)
Can you be a successful Couch Potato investor if you pick stocks on the side or
make tactical shifts based on the economy?
Then there's the type who
makes tactical shifts like overweighting emerging markets or underweighting bonds based on forecasts.
XTR isn't the only fund that
makes tactical shifts according to market conditions: the iShares Core Portfolio Builders and Claymore CorePortfolios also do so.
The manager will
make tactical shifts in the fund's asset mix when he feels that stock or bond valuations are at an extreme.
If
you made a tactical shift away from stocks based on his valuation, you missed an enormous rally: 2012 saw the best first quarter for US stocks since 1998.
The worst strategy for most investors is to become tactical because they tend to
make their tactical shifts at the wrong times or at best at random times.
Not exact matches
It's definitely more of a
tactical market, but our investment style in the fixed - income group is such that we're not going to be incredibly active in jerking our positions around — that is, we aren't much for
making daily or weekly
shifts in our model portfolio positions.
The
tactical shift that we
made circa December of 2014 was to move from an indiscriminate risk taking posture (e.g., large, small, growth, value, foreign, etc.) to a higher quality, lower volatility, large - cap only positioning.
We
made a similar
tactical shift from a 30 % -35 % basket of diversified income (e.g., short, long, investment grade, higher yielding, foreign, etc.) down to roughly 25 % investment grade bonds exclusively.
With the Trade Union Bill
making radical changes to the UK's strike laws, we're helping employers understand how these reforms
shift the legal and
tactical dynamics around industrial action and the wider impact on their industrial relations strategies.