Escape From Bondage Time To Flee Fixed Income?

摘要

The biggest, most-sophisticated public pension funds have been embracing alternatives in recent years, but the public system with one of the best returns in 2008 is a hard-core traditionalist. The Texas Municipal Retirement System was down just 1.3 percent in calendar 2008, compared with the double-digit losses that most funds are reporting. The reason: The $ 12 billion fund had more than 90 percent of its assets in bonds for most of the year; on average, public funds usually hold 27 percent in fixed-income investments. Past performance is no guarantee of future strategy, though. The Austin-based fund is reducing the massive overweight bond position it has maintained throughout its 60 years of existence. Even as stocks plummeted last year, the fund began shifting 1 percent of its assets every month out of bonds into stocks; it ended the year with a 12 percent equity allocation.