Monthly Archives: March 2012
Nortel seeks legal advice on exploring bankruptcy
Nortel seeks legal advice on exploring bankruptcy This is a sad day for current and ex-Nortel employees. The implication on pension plan members is difficult to determine as yet, but those who have read my earlier blogs on pensions may have a sense on the possible outcomes. A CAW note on potential pension outcomes in […]
Long-Term Care Insurance (LTCI) II- Musings on the Affordability, Need and Value: A (More) Quantitative View
Long-Term Care Insurance (LTCI) II- Musings on the Affordability, Need and Value: A (More) Quantitative View (Originally posted September 2009, re-hosted in March 2012) Last January in Long-Term Care Insurance- An OverviewI looked at LTCI policies. I promised at the time that I’ll do another more quantitative blog on the subject “shortly”. Since last January much […]
Long- term Care Insurance (LTCI- I)
Long- term Care Insurance (LTCI- I) (Originally posted in January 2009, re-hosted in March 2012) A couple of months ago a reader asked what I thought about LTCIs. Not being well versed on the subject I started reading about them and the more I read, the more it became obvious why people are so confused […]
Protecting the Downside, while Participating in the Upside
Protecting the Downside, while Participating in the Upside A couple of months ago in “Lifecycle investing” I, superficially touched, upon Zvi Bodie’s view that diversification is not the only way to reduce investment/market risk. In fact, according to him, it may not even be the best way. In a reference that I quote in that […]
Structured Products III – Create Your Own Enhanced Index Product
Structured Products III – Create Your Own Enhanced Index Product In Structured Product II- Good or Bad? It Depends on Your “View” we discussed how to compare products with different performance characteristics, by using your “view” of the probability of future returns and we compared the expected outcome (value) of an enhanced index structured product […]
Structured Products II- Good or Bad? It Depends on Your “View”.
Structured Products II- Good or Bad? It Depends on Your “View”. An earlier blog provided an overview of Structured Products . As a specific structured product application consider an enhanced index product with six year maturity whose payback is 1.45x the reference price index return in local currency (without dividends),when it is positive, ; and […]
GMWB II- Guaranteed Minimum Withdrawal Benefit II
GMWB II- Guaranteed Minimum Withdrawal Benefit II This is a follow-up to the GMWB I blog of a few weeks ago, where I also described the characteristics of typical GMWB products. Here I will compare various decumulation options with the hypothetical GMWB product described earlier and various parameters. This will get a little technical, but […]
GMWB I – Guaranteed Minimum Withdrawal Benefit (Preliminary)
GMWB I – Guaranteed Minimum Withdrawal Benefit (Preliminary) I have received questions about Guaranteed Minimum Withdrawal Benefit (GMWB) products from a number of individuals. So this is the first of a couple of in-depth blogs on the subject. (Follow-up blogs are available at GMWB II- Guaranteed Minimum Withdrawal Benefit II, GMWB III – Q […]
Balanced Portfolio: Simple and Cheap ETF Implementation
(Originally posted July 16, 2008) Why is this important? Because over a lifetime of saving for retirement, total assets accumulated at 1.5% and 3.0% annual fees are respectively 23% and 46% lower than those resulting from 0.4% fees (Ambachtsheer and Bauer)!Or, because in retirement 1.5% extra annual cost can reduce you standatrd of living by […]
Pensions Advocacy
Pensions Advocacy Pensioners without a fully indexed government guaranteed pension plan are exposed to numerous problems, beside the corrosive effect of inflation over a lengthy retirement and the rapid disappearance of DB pension plans in general. Some of these exposures relate to pension rules or lack of them, that may have been appropriate when introduced, […]
RetirementAction.com 