• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Contact Us Today!
800.317.9119

Investor Resources Inc.

Portfolio Management, Wealth Management, Investment Analysis

Client Portal Login
  • Home
  • Team
  • Investment Process
  • Market Update Webinar
  • About the RPM System
  • Theory or Reality
  • Investor Blog
  • Contact Us
Retirement – Just the luck of the draw?

Retirement – Just the luck of the draw?

To adapt a line from Robert Burns, “The best laid plans of mice and men…” often go awry and that includes many retirement plans. In the ’80s, withdrawing seven percent a year from retirement accounts seemed reasonable. We were living in one of the best economic and stock market environments since the Great Depression. Until we ran into the Y2K technology collapse, our retirement plans seemed solid. The result was that withdrawal rates were cut  to four percent.

Easy mortgages created an economic recovery that restored hope until the 2008 financial collapse. Then, even a four percent withdrawal rate seemed risky. Currently with stock prices that can be hard to justify based on earnings and with interest rates at historic lows, a buy and hold investment strategy offers little hope for retirees. Retiring at the beginning of a bull market or a bear market is not within a retiree’s control. However, it seems to be the real determinant for a successful retirement.

Most investors have portfolios built on a foundation of Modern Portfolio Theory published by Harry Markowitz in 1952. Due to the bear markets being statistically impossible to model, there is no provision for investors to avoid the carnage of bear markets. Statistically, bear markets are a one in five hundred year phenomenon. 1

Today’s global, digital markets are different than long-term historical averages imply. We have had sixteen bear markets since 1929. Without a disciplined exit strategy, investors should expect bear market seventeen during their retirement. To learn about how a portfolio exit strategy can work, attend one of the up coming seminars.

Worst Possible Time To Retire

  1. The (Mis)Behavior of Markets; Benoit Mandelbrot: 1997

Copyright © Investor Resources Inc. All rights reserved. Investor Resources, Inc. is a registered investment adviser in the States of Washington, Arizona and Texas. The adviser may not transact business in states where it is not appropriately registered, excluded or exempted from registration. Individualized responses to persons that involve either the effecting of transaction in securities, or the rendering of personalized investment advice for compensation, will not be made without registration or exemption.

Compliance  |  Important Customer Disclosure  |  ADV Part 1 and 2

Terms of Service  |  Sitemap

Bellevue Office: 601 - 108th Ave. NE, Suite 1900, Bellevue, WA 98004  Phone: 425.673.5000

Port Orchard Office: 1922 Pottery Ave., Suite 110·Port Orchard, WA 98366  Phone: 360.895.9119

Login

Lost your password?

Reset Password

Log in