Volatility-adjusted Retirement Income Streams

Should investors consider portfolio volatility when choosing allocations to stocks and bonds in their retirement accounts? In his October 2023 paper entitled “Retirement Planning: The Volatility-Adjusted Coverage Ratio”, Javier Estrada introduces volatility-adjusted coverage ratio (VAC) as an alternative retirement portfolio metric. He defines this metric as coverage ratio (C, number of years of withdrawals supported relative to retirement period length) divided by annual portfolio volatility during retirement. He compares optimal stocks-bonds allocations for different fixed real annual withdrawal rates across 22 country markets and the world market using either C of VAC. For all markets and withdrawal rates, he uses historical returns for stocks and bonds with annual portfolio rebalancing and 30-year retirement periods. Using annual returns for stocks and bonds and annual inflation rates in the U.S. during 1872 through 2022 (Shiller data) and in 21 other countries during 1900 through 2019 (Dimson-Marsh-Staunton data), he finds that: (more…)