Research, analysis, and thoughts on retirement investments & the future of personalization
While investors had a pretty easy ride heading into 2020, they definitely experienced some bumpiness during the tumultuous 1st quarter. Even with this horrible first quarter taken into account, though, most target date investors have still experienced positive performance over a longer-term five-year view. However, looking back over the past years also illustrates some odd anomalies in performance.
While we believe individual TDF performance should not be analyzed on a quarter-by-quarter basis, regular examination of the industry as a whole can reveal general themes and interesting nuances.
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.