magician

Not directly, but we've added the ability for the user to adjust the expected return from the historical (w/o fees) numbers. I think I'll have time to run the analyses today and post some pictures.

clawhammer

I keep checking this every day hoping that you've had a chance to post the screenshots. I'm really curious to see what the results will be.

magician

OK, I finally got a few free moments and kept my promise:

First, a couple of notes:

For money market funds in general - RABXX in particular - I cannot get any historical pricing data. Therefore, in place of RABXX I used the 13-week Treasury, which is our proxy for cash.

The 2050 target fund - RBITX - has only existed since February, 2007: 3 years, 4 months. I've generally found that these funds are not very efficient; i.e., they have too much risk for the return they generate, or too little return for their volatility. For these two reasons, I didn't include that fund.

So, here you go:

The Summary screen:

Notice all the red correlation numbers? This mix of funds tends to have returns that move in sync; in other words, not much risk-reducing diversification. In fact, only three securities - the PIMCO Total Return fund, the money market fund, and the American Funds New World fund - show up anywhere in efficient portfolios. That's disappointing.

The particular mix I chose has about 3/4 of the volatility of the S&P 500; you could change that easily.

The Create Portfolio screen:

Note that the numbers in the Expected Return column are lower than those in the Historical Return column: I subtracted the annual expenses.

The Monthly Return screen:

This makes it clear why the correlation numbers are so high: you can see the returns going up and down together.

The Efficient Frontier screen:

This is pretty much self-explanatory.

The Details screen:

This shows the details on the individual securities, and also the benchmarks.

There you go!

I'll send you a PM on how to download your own copy to use.

clawhammer

Thanks magician. I updated my distribution to have 53% go to PTRRX and 47% go to RNWBX. At least that's how I understood your findings.

magician

My pleasure.

As I say, this mix has about 3/4 the volatility of the S&P 500. If you want to change that, it's easy to do.