| | Sponsored message from Russell Investments | | Custom Glide Paths Discussion with Russell Investments | | Learn more about Russell Investments’ Custom Glide Paths with Josh Cohen, Russell Investments’ Defined Contribution Practice Leader. | | | Industry Insights | | Fed Tapering Effect on Fixed Income Allocations | | Year-end reflection has led many defined benefit
plan sponsors to revisit a perplexing problem they have been facing all year: What
should be done with fixed income allocations in light of the expected rise in
rates due to Fed tapering? | | | Benefit Briefs | | Lessons Learned from Others’ Mistakes | | When the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) launched
a series of “LESE [Learn, Educate, Self-correct and Enforce] examinations” last
year, one of its intentions was to discover trends in compliance failure among
qualified retirement plans. The IRS also hoped the projects, in which auditors
reviewed 50 qualified plans with similar characteristics to measure compliance
across certain subsets of plans, could educate the public about these trends
and thereby stall their growth. | | Are You Getting Enough from Your Adviser? | | Small retirement plan sponsors may not be
getting the services from an adviser they need. Just fewer than half of plan
sponsors do not think they are getting good value for their plan, says Stephen
Davis of Guardian Retirement Solutions. It’s a surprising statistic, but,
“they’re out there, and they’re looking for help,” Davis tells PLANSPONSOR. In
the micro plan market (less than $5 million in assets, and fewer than 100
participants), plan sponsors face a number of challenges to running a plan.
Employers in this market should be sure that they are getting the best service
from an adviser. | | | Buyer's Market | | John Hancock Reduces Mutual Fund Expenses | | John Hancock Investments is contractually
lowering expenses for nearly all funds with Class R6 institutional share
classes. As of February 1, for nearly all R6 shares, the funds’ adviser has
agreed to contractually waive and/or reimburse all class-specific expenses. | | | Economic Events | | Spending on private construction was at a
seasonally adjusted annual rate of $ 663.9 billion in December 2013, 1.0% above
the revised November estimate of $ 657.1 billion. Residential construction was
at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $ 352.6 billion in December, 2.6% above
the revised November estimate of $ 343.8 billion. Nonresidential construction
was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $ 311.3 billion in December, 0.7% below
the revised November estimate of $ 313.4 billion. | | | Market Mirror | | Major U.S. stock indices started February
off on a bad note, as the Dow fell 326.05 points (2.08%) to 15,372.80
yesterday. The NASDAQ plummeted 106.92 points (2.61%) to 3,996.96, and the
S&P 500 lost 40.70 points (2.28%) to finish at 1,741.89. The Russell 2000
dropped 36.28 points (3.21%) to 1,094.60, and the Wilshire 5000 closed 462.14
points (2.42%) lower at 18,643.10.
On the NYSE, 3.2 billion shares traded,
with declining issues outnumbering advancing issues nearly 6 to 1. On the
NASDAQ, 2.7 billion shares changed hands, with a 6 to 1 lead for decliners.
The price of the 10-year Treasury note was down 1/32,
and the price of the 30-year Treasury bond declined 2/32, increasing their yields
to 2.654% and 3.608%, respectively.
| | | Financial Sense | | Asset Allocation Funds Post Strong 2013 Performance | | Target-date funds had an average total return of
5.4% for the fourth quarter of 2013, according to Morningstar data. However,
returns were significantly less than the 10.5% return of the S&P 500 due to
poor performance in non-U.S. equities and bonds, the “Ibbotson Target-Date
Report 4Q 2013” shows. For the 2013 calendar year, the average total return for
target-date funds was a very strong 16.3%. | | | Small Talk | | ON
THIS DATE: In
1789, George Washington became the
first and only president to be unanimously elected by the Electoral College. He
repeated this notable feat on the same day in 1792. In 1826, “The Last of the Mohicans” by James Fennimore Cooper was
published. In 1861, in Montgomery,
Alabama, delegates from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia,
and Louisiana convened to establish the Confederate States of America. In 1922, the Ford Motor Company acquired
the failing luxury automaker Lincoln Motor Company for $8 million. In 1938, Disney released “Snow White and
the Seven Dwarfs.” In 1974, Patty
Hearst, the 19-year-old daughter of newspaper publisher Randolph Hearst, was
kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley, California. Three days later, the
Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a small U.S. leftist group, announced in a
letter to a Berkeley radio station that it was holding Hearst as a
“prisoner of war.” In 1983,
singer Karen Carpenter died from heart failure brought on by her long,
unpublicized struggle with anorexia.
TUESDAY
TRIVIA: Elevators move the equivalent of the world’s population
every 72 hours.
| | TRIVIAL
PURSUITS: Where was the first passenger safety elevator
installed? | | Share the good news with a friend! Pass the Dash along – and tell your
friends/associates they can sign up for their own copy. |
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