Spot The Sentence That Dooms Pension Funds (Don’t Worry, We Highlighted It)

Thursday, February 22, 2018
By Paul Martin

by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com,
ZeroHedge.com
Thu, 02/22/2018

The “pension crisis” is one of those things – like electric cars and nuclear fusion – that’s definitely coming but never seems to actually arrive.

However, for pension funds the reason a crisis hasn’t yet happened is also the reason that it will happen, and soon:

The Risk Pension Funds Can’t Escape
(Wall Street Journal) – Public pension funds that lost hundreds of billions during the last financial crisis still face significant risk from one basic investment: stocks.

That vulnerability came into focus earlier this month as markets descended into correction territory for the first time since February 2016. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest public pension fund in the U.S., lost $18.5 billion in value over a 10-day trading period ended Feb. 9, according to figures provided by the system.

The sudden drop represented 5% of total assets held by the pension fund, which had roughly half of its portfolio in equities as of late 2017. It gained back $8.1 billion through last Friday as markets recovered.

“It looks like 2018 is likely to be more turbulent than what we have experienced the last couple of years,” the fund’s chief investment officer, Ted Eliopoulos, told his board last Monday at a public meeting.

Retirement systems that manage money for firefighters, police officers, teachers and other public workers are increasingly reliant on stocks for returns as the bull market nears its ninth year. By the end of 2017, equities had surged to an average 53.6% of public pension portfolios from 50.3% one year earlier, according to figures released earlier this month by the Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service.

Those average holdings were the highest on a percentage basis since 2010, according to the Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service data, and near the 54.6% average these funds held at the end of 2007.

One reason public pensions are so willing to bet on stocks is because of aggressive investment targets designed to fulfill mounting obligations to millions of government workers. The goal of most pension funds is to pay for those future benefits by earning 7% to 8% a year.

“Equities always take up a disproportionate share of the risk budget that any plan has,” said Wilshire Consulting President Andrew Junkin, who advises public pension funds. “You can never get away from it.”

That stance paid off during 2017’s market rally as public pensions had one of their best years of the past decade. They earned 12.4% in the 2017 fiscal year ended June 30, according to Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service.

But the risks are sizable losses during market downturns, which then can lead to deeper funding problems. The two largest public pensions in the U.S.—California Public Employees’ Retirement System, known by its abbreviation Calpers, and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System—lost nearly $100 billion in value during the fiscal year ended June 30, 2009. Nearly a decade later, neither fund has enough assets on hand to meet all future obligations to their workers and retirees.

The Rest…HERE

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