Dorsey Wright’s Podcast: DWA Products Update

March 7, 2013

Dorsey Wright’s Podcast: DWA Products Update

Tom Dorsey, Tammy DeRosier, and John Lewis

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Choosing Your Emerging Markets ETF: PIE vs. EEM

March 7, 2013

Two Emerging Markets ETFs: PowerShares DWA Emerging Markets Technical Leaders (PIE) and the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets (EEM). Very different performance. Very different holdings.

PIE Choosing Your Emerging Markets ETF: PIE vs. EEM

Source: Yahoo! Finance

Source: PowerShares

Source: iShares

Of course, very different assets under management as well so they do have us there! (PIE has approximately $400 million in AUM, while EEM has $51 billion). However, that just might change over time.

See www.powershares.com for more information. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. A list of all holdings for the trailing 12 months is available upon request.

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February Arrow DWA Funds Review

March 7, 2013

February 28, 2013

The Arrow DWA Balanced Fund (DWAFX)

At the end of February, the fund had approximately 44% in U.S. Equities, 25% in Fixed Income, 17% in International Equities, and 12% in Alternatives. This is little changed from the allocations to the different asset classes as of the end of January. However, we did have some changes within the Alternative asset class: Our position in gold was removed and replaced with real estate. The balance of the Alternative exposure is to the currency carry trade. Our biggest overweight continues to be U.S. equities.

DWAFX gained 0.23% in February and is up 3.72% through 2/28/13. Much of the best performance for the month came from our exposure to domestic equities (small and mid caps in particular), while international equities pulled back over the course of the month. Our fixed income exposure also modestly advanced in February. Although interest rates declined in February, the overall trend of rates has been higher since the middle of last year. Our exposure to fixed income can range from approximately 25 to 65 percent and right now it is at its lower limit.

We believe that a real strength of this strategy is its balance between remaining diversified, while also adapting to market leadership. When an asset class is weak its exposure will tend to be towards the lower end of the exposure constraints, and when an asset class is strong its exposure in the fund will trend toward the upper end of its exposure constraints. Relative strength provides an effective means of determining the appropriate weights of the strategy.

dwafx February Arrow DWA Funds Review

The Arrow DWA Tactical Fund (DWTFX)

At the end of February, the fund had approximately 62% in U.S. Equities, 28% in International Equities, and 9% in Real Estate. Over the course of February, we added to our U.S. Equity exposure, and reduced our exposure to International Real Estate. When this bull market in U.S. equities began nearly four years ago, there were not many who projected the impressive gains that we have ultimately seen. In fact, without a disciplined approach to following trends, it may have been psychologically difficult to overweight this asset class. However, this continues to be our biggest overweight. Our U.S. equity exposure remains in areas that have shown some fairly stable leadership, such as Consumer Discretionary, Financials, and Healthcare. Stable leadership is very helpful for trend following strategies and Consumer Discretionary stocks have been fairly persistent leaders for the last 5 years. Notably absent from our exposure is commodities, which have been particularly weak for the last couple of years. Commodities were among the best performing asset classes over the past decade, but that strength has not so far carried over to this decade. Again, we see the benefits of being adaptive.

DWTFX was flat in February and is up 3.79% through 2/28/13. Much of the best performance for the month came from our exposure to domestic equities, while our exposure to European equities pulled back over the course of the month.

This strategy is a go-anywhere strategy with very few constraints in terms of exposure to different asset classes. The strategy can invest in domestic equities, international equities, inverse equities, currencies, commodities, real estate, and fixed income. Market history clearly shows that asset classes go through secular bull and bear markets and we believe this strategy is ideally designed to capitalize on those trends. Additionally, we believe that this strategy can provide important risk diversification for a client’s overall portfolio.

DWTFX February Arrow DWA Funds Review

Of interest to Wells Fargo Advisors: The Arrow DWA Tactical Fund is currently among the funds on the Wells Fargo Advisors Mutual Fund Recommended List.

Please see www.arrowfunds.com for more information about The Arrow DWA Balanced Fund and The Arrow DWA Tactical Fund. Holding for the trailing 12 months is available upon request. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns.

 

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Target Date Fund Follies

March 7, 2013

Target date and lifecycle funds have taken off since 2006, when they were deemed qualified default investment alternatives in the Pension Protection Act. I’m sure it seemed like a good idea at the time. Unfortunately, it planted the idea that a glidepath that moved toward bonds as the investor moved toward retirement was a good idea. Assets in target date funds were nearly $400 billion at the end of 2011—and they have continued to grow rapidly.

In fact, bonds will prove to be a good idea if they perform well and a lousy idea if they perform poorly. Since 10-year future returns correlate closely with the current coupon yield, prospects for bonds going forward aren’t particularly promising at the moment. I’ve argued before that tactical asset allocation may provide an alternative method of accumulating capital, as opposed to a restrictive target-date glidepath.

A new research paper by Javier Estrada, The Glidepath Illusion: An International Perspective, makes a much broader claim. He looks at typical glidepaths that move toward bonds over time, and then at a wide variety of alternatives, ranging from inverse glidepaths that move toward stocks over time to balanced funds. His findings are stunning.

This lifecycle strategy implies that investors are aggressive with little capital and conservative with much more capital, which may not be optimal in terms of wealth accumulation. This article evaluates three alternative types of strategies, including contrarian strategies that follow a glidepath opposite to that of target-date funds; that is, they become more aggressive as retirement approaches. The results from a comprehensive sample that spans over 19 countries, two regions, and 110 years suggest that, relative to lifecycle strategies, the alternative strategies considered here provide investors with higher expected terminal wealth, higher upside potential, more limited downside potential, and higher uncertainty but limited to how much better, not how much worse, investors are expected to do with these strategies.

In other words, the only real question was how much better the alternative strategies performed. (I added the bold.)

Every strategy option they considered performed better than the traditional glidepath! True, if they were more focused on equities, they were more volatile. But, for the cost of the volatility, you ended up with more money—sometimes appreciably more money. This data sample was worldwide and extended over 110 years, so it wasn’t a fluke. Staying equity-focused didn’t work occasionally in some markets—it worked consistently in every time frame in every region. Certainly the future won’t be exactly like the past, so there is no way to know if these results will hold going forward. However, bonds have had terrific performance over the last 30 years and the glidepath favoring them still didn’t beat alternative strategies over an investing lifetime.

Bonds, to me, make sense to reduce volatility. Some clients simply must have a reduced-volatility portfolio to sleep at night, and I get that. But Mr. Estrada’s study shows that the typical glidepath is outperformed even by a 60/40-type balanced fund. (Balanced funds, by the way, are also designated QDIAs in the Pension Protection Act.) Tactical asset allocation, where bonds are held temporarily for defensive purposes, might also allow clients to sleep at night while retaining a growth orientation. The bottom line is that it makes sense to reduce volatility just enough to keep the client comfortable, but no more.

I’d urge you to read this paper carefully. Maybe your conclusions will be different than mine. But my take-away is this: Over the course of an investing lifetime, it is very important to stay focused on growth.

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Fund Flows

March 7, 2013

Mutual fund flow estimates are derived from data collected by The Investment Company Institute covering more than 95 percent of industry assets and are adjusted to represent industry totals.

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