Posted on 11/20/2008 12:29:36 PM PST by SmithL
I don't work for them, but someone in my household does.
They are a conservative, solid company.
The points you made are correct; they are a very solid company.
And they are not a pension, unless they manage someone else’s pension.
Is there a real summary of the size and identity of the investments by CalPERS? Really, as a tax payer in this worthless state....where the Hell did the money go?
I’m sure there is such a list, but I don’t know where it is. I do know that they added a bunch of unions reps to their board a couple of years back, who steered CalPERS to a bunch of PC investments.
My wife has an defined-contribution plan with TIAA-CREF, allocated at 50% stocks and 50% bonds ever since it started. The stock part was way down as of a couple of months ago, but the bond part stayed the same (if I remember correctly), and the combined account is down 30%. TIAA-CREF advisors came to the workplace to have discussions with the employees, and actually advised them not to even look at their quarterly statements for another year or two. People were in shock, especially since they had always believed the nonsense about TIAA-CREF being a very conservative, safe company.
“People were in shock, especially since they had always believed the nonsense about TIAA-CREF being a very conservative, safe company.”
50% in bonds and 50% in stocks seems like a conservative allocation.
Planning for a Dow going from 14,000 to 8,000 is pretty tough to do.
Everyone assumed that “conservative” meant selling the stock before it went down 45%, rather than riding it down. We are not aware of the necessity to tell them to go to cash when conditions aren’t right for stocks. I don’t own stock directly, but when I was helping a relative who was dabbling in them, we always tried to have a stop loss about 10% down.
The TIAA part is pretty conservative but they have various fund options, some of which are more aggressive than others.
Their real estate fund has been fantastic. They own a lot of commercial buildings and the fund has averaged at least 9% a year for a long time. Sometime this summer, I think around August, the curve began to flatten out. It was the first time it had gone down in years. It’s only down now about 7% so far this year. Some of their stock funds are waay down.
(Fidelity’s real estate fund, OTOH, has been a disaster.)
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