Asset Allocation as Active Investing
On October 25th of this year, the PMA investment committee held its quarterly investment meeting to review the current state of the financial markets and to discuss what changes, if any, we will make to our clients’ portfolios. This is a critical meeting for the firm; it gives us a chance to remove ourselves from day-to-day pressures and focus solely on the big picture, the investment decisions that ultimately drive the risk and the return of our clients’ portfolios. The discussion is spirited, frank, and uninterrupted.
One of the main topics we discuss is asset allocation – what percentage of a portfolio should be in stocks and what percentage in bonds. And we discuss asset allocation within these categories – for the equity portion of the portfolio, what percentage to international equities, aggressive equities (typically small –cap funds, large-growth funds) and conservative equities (typically, large and mid-cap value funds); and for the fixed-income portion of the portfolio, what percentage to government bonds, corporate bonds, and high-yield bonds.
