Research, analysis, and thoughts on retirement investments & the future of personalization
Target Date Funds (TDFs) are often categorized by being active or passive based on the makeup of the underlying holdings. Many issuers also offer blended or hybrid TDF series, which utilize both active and passive underlying holdings. However, the specific blend of active and passive holdings can be very different among issuers.
One of the most decorated tennis players—tied for 14th on the all-time number of grand slams list—is John McEnroe. However, he is probably remembered by most for his frequent questioning of the chair umpire. His most memorable tirade in 1981 at Wimbledon was a quote that eventually provided the title for his memoir… “You cannot be serious!”
Target Date Funds' “yellow brick road” is their glide path. The glide path is, in essence, a pre-described mix of the TDFs asset allocation over time. Since the advent of TDFs, it has been universally accepted that the longer a participant's time horizon, the more risk they should accept via higher equity exposure.
The advent of the Target Date fund was back in early 1994 (as detailed in an earlier post). As TDFs grew in popularity and more plans/advisors/participants starting using them, a question arose as to how properly measure a TDF's performance.
Target Date funds are a series of vintages where the vintages represent a future year that an investor wishes to reach their target. With regards to retirement this is an investors expected retirement date.