Boosting Retirement Outcome via Capture of Factor Premiums

Can investors improve long-term retirement portfolio outcomes by targeting equity factor premiums in their stock allocations? In his April 2023 paper entitled “How Targeting the Size, Value, and Profitability Premiums Can Improve Retirement Outcomes”, Mathieu Pellerin investigates whether stock portfolios that target size, value and profitability factor premiums better sustain retirement spending and generate larger bequests than those holding the broad stock market. His hypothetical investor:

• Starts saving at 25, retires at 65 and dies at 95.
• Initially allocates 100% to stocks, at age 45 reduces this allocation linearly to 50% at age 65 by shifting to bonds, and thereafter maintains 50%/50% stocks/bonds.
• Makes $1,042 monthly contributions ($12,500 per year, or $500,000 from age 25 to 65).
• After retirement, withdraws (consumes) a constant annual 4% in real terms of the balance at retirement.
• For the stock allocation, chooses either a broad value-weighted market index (CRSP 1-10) or the Dimensional US Adjusted Market 1 index that emphasizes size, value and profitability factors with low turnover.
• Earns real annual broad stock market returns of either 8.1% (actual historical average) or 5.0% (a conservative 5th percentile of historical return distribution).
• For the bond allocation, holds 5-year U.S. Treasury notes.

He simulates 100,000 lifecycles by, for each lifecycle: (1) extracting 70-year (840-month) real asset class return subsamples from the full histories; and, (2) applying block bootstrapping with 10-year mean block size to generate lifecycle portfolio returns. Using monthly historical returns for the specified stock/bond proxies and monthly U.S. inflation data during June 1927 through December 2022, he finds that:

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