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No Surprise here as Pension Losses Mount

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CalPERS HQ

Public pension managers are coming to the realization, too late I might add, that retirees don’t belong in hedge funds. I’ve warned against this misstep for years (see here, here, here and here for starters). Today, The Wall Street Journal rings the alarm bell on the issue as well.

In the U.S., the country’s largest public-pension plan is struggling with the same bleak outlook. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, which handles benefits for 1.8 million members, recently posted a 0.6% return for its 2016 fiscal year, its worst annual result since the financial crisis. Its investment consultant recently estimated that annual returns will be closer to 6% over the next decade, shy of its 7.5% annual target.

Calpers investment chief Ted Eliopoulos’s strategy for the era of lower returns is to reduce costs and the complexity in the fund’s $300 billion portfolio. He and the board decided to pull out of hedge funds, shop major chunks of Calpers’ real-estate and forestry portfolios and halve the number of external money managers by 2020.

Public Pension Problems in CA

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E.J. Smith

Editor-in-Chief
E.J. Smith is Founder of YourSurvivalGuy.com, Managing Director at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd., a Managing Editor of Richardcyoung.com, and Editor-in-Chief of Youngresearch.com. E.J. graduated from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with a B.S. in finance and investments. In 1995, E.J. began his investment career at Fidelity Investments in Boston before joining Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. in 1998. E.J. has trained at Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH. His first drum set was a 5-piece Slingerland with Zilldjians. He grew-up worshiping Neil Peart of the band Rush, and loves the song Tom Sawyer—the name of his family’s boat, a Grady-White Canyon 306. He grew up in Mattapoisett, MA, an idyllic small town on the water near Cape Cod. He spends time in Newport, RI and Bartlett, NH—both as far away from Wall Street as one could mentally get. The Newport office is on a quiet, tree lined street not far from the harbor and the log cabin in Bartlett, NH, the “Live Free or Die” state, sits on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest. He enjoys spending time in Key West and Paris. Please get in touch with E.J. at ejsmith@youngresearch.com.

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