Asset Dedication: How to Grow Wealthy with the Next Generation of Asset Allocation [Hardcover]

Stephen Huxley (Author), J Burns (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2004

The first book to close the perilous gaps in—and enhance the performance of—asset allocation

Asset allocation is one of today’s bestknown investment approaches. Problem is, its major precept—that a magic-number, fixed-percentage asset mix will provide superior results for investors who have dramatically different goals and needs—is scientifically unproven and fundamentally flawed.

Asset Dedication updates the asset allocation model, outlining a seven-step process designed to more effectively meet the real needs of real investors. Showing investors how to design low-risk portfolios that more accurately and successfully dedicate assets, this breakthrough book helps investors fill in the gaps inherent to asset allocation by demonstrating:

• Techniques for ascertaining the best asset mix by determining individual needs and goals
• How asset dedication provides superior protection against inflation and market risk
• Investing strategies for the three investment life phases—accumulation, distribution, and transfer

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

The breakthrough technique that outperforms asset allocation--and takes your portfolio to the next level

Over the past two decades, asset allocation has become the holy grail of investment techniques. Experts championed it, brokers and financial planners sold it, clients bought it, and few questioned the wisdom of trying to squeeze widely varying investors and their financial goals into prefabricated "one size fits all" allocation formulas.

Problem is, asset allocation has significant flaws in the way it is used today, especially for personal investors. Asset Dedication exposes these flaws, corrects them, and propels investors and advisors into the next generation of personal investing. This revolutionary book introduces asset dedication, an investment program based on the latest techniques in modern financial management technology that will allow you to:

• Improve a portfolio's performance by constructing a seven-step, personalized asset dedication program
• Design financial strategies tailored to fit the three investing phases of life--accumulation, distribution, and transfer
• Build a flexible but passive set-it-and-forget-it portfolio that matches or exceeds actively managed portfolios without high fees and "loads"

The time is long past for the shortcomings of asset allocation to be revealed and repaired. Asset Dedication shows how to build a personalized portfolio, one that has been proven through extensive backtesting to consistently outperform asset allocation and meet your financial wants and needs over both the short- and long-term.

"New ideas often take a long time to replace old ideas. The purpose of this book is to introduce a new idea: asset dedication. It is a strategy that works. The evidence is here."--From Chapter 1

To anyone who has taken the time to look, it has become clear that asset allocation has severe drawbacks. Chief among those is the focus on applying static, set-in-stone formulas to a narrow range of "model" portfolios and forcing a wide range of investors to follow them. This may help brokers to quickly pigeonhole investors into pre-set allocation models with their generic, impersonal formulas, but fails to provide truly customized portfolios. Meeting the widely varying needs, resources, and goals of individual investors precisely and safely is exactly where asset allocation falls short, and reveals its own fundamental flaws.

Asset Dedication breaks the monopoly that asset allocation has held over individual investors. It provides a rationale for why each dollar is invested in stocks, bonds, or cash and how to dedicate the precise amount in each asset class to do the job it does best--no more, no less:

• Just enough cash to meet emergency needs
• Just enough in bonds to provide sufficient and steady income
• Everything else in stocks for long-term growth

Asset dedication represents the first major shift in investment strategy since the popularization of asset allocation in the 1980s. Historical comparisons show that it achieves better performance than the traditional and often arbitrary fixed-formula asset allocation approach.

Asset allocation is about to replaced by a new technique that promises to shift the ways in which investors at every level, especially retirees, approach their investment decisions. Asset Dedication introduces you to this focused new approach, shows how to break the stranglehold that asset allocation holds on your portfolio, and helps you, once and for all, to become the master of your current and future financial success.

About the Author

Stephen J. Huxley, Ph.D., and J. Brent Burns (San Francisco, CA) are founding partners of Asset Dedication, L.L.C. Dr. Huxley, a registered investment adviser, is a professor of decision sciences at the University of San Francisco.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (August 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071434828
• ISBN-13: 978-0071434829
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #220,412 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A simple but profound concept, May 23, 2005

By 

Larry Wiens - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Asset Dedication: How to Grow Wealthy with the Next Generation of Asset Allocation (Hardcover)

I have begun using the Asset Dedication principles with my clients. It is easy for uneducated investors to understand the concepts. It provides for them the guareenteed security (using Treasury Bonds) that their income is provided for years ahead. The Asset Dedication website guides me in selecting an efficient bond ladder portfolio for each client's needs.

I look forward to using the "rolling" bond ladder in years ahead when interest rates are hopefully higher to create an even more efficient portfolio.

Client used to leave an appointment "hoping" that their selection of Bonds vs. Stocks proportions was appropriate. Now they walk away saying that they have a certain number of years of income set aside and are therefore comfortable with the volatility of the growth portion of their portfolios. They are comfortable because we have "bought time" which is an essential ingredient to growth.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Anti-Asset Allocation Book - Fixed Formulas Are Out!, December 1, 2004

By 

Stephen Huxley "Stephen J. Huxley" (MORAGA, California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Asset Dedication: How to Grow Wealthy with the Next Generation of Asset Allocation (Hardcover)

If you have ever wondered exactly how much or how little science is used in determining the asset allocation formulas that your broker recommends, this book should be revealing. We, the authors, began to get suspicious about the wide spread use of the strategy when different brokers recommended different allocation formulas for the same person. If you went to three different optometrists, you would not expect to get three different prescriptions for your glasses. One of the hallmarks of science is replication of results under identical circumstances.

So we read the original academic papers that popularized asset allocation, reviewed its many critics, and used historical comparisons to test asset dedication against asset allocation, with its fixed-formula, rebalancing approach. Asset dedication is an investment strategy that has been used for years by high-end financial professionals who must manage cash flow demands, the same problem retired people face.

Lo and behold, the asset dedication strategy beat all asset allocation strategies with less than 80 percent stocks in the majority of decades over a variety of time periods from 2003 back to 1990, 1976, 1947, and 1926 using only US Treasury bonds and index funds. Asset dedication is also a low cost, passive strategy that has no "magic formulas." No wonder the pros who have to deal with cash flows prefer it. Asset dedication is to asset allocation what passive index funds are to active mutual funds - cheaper, easier, and better. Its superior performance based on our statistical research compelled us to report the results. That is why we wrote this book.

The book describes in detail how asset dedication is designed to deal directly with the investment situation that retired people or those nearing retirement face. It will produce identical recommendations for identical circumstances and creates a designer portfolio customized to each investor's specific individual needs rather than using a one-size-fits-all "model portfolio" approach.

The book also introduces the "critical path" concept for retirement planning by younger people and is supported by an online web site (www.assetdedication.com). Professional financial planners are now beginning to look to asset dedication as either the next generation of asset allocation or a whole new paradigm in personal investment strategy. It works. The evidence is in the book. See for yourself.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Asset Dedication - A Must Read, December 29, 2004

By 

M. K Yousuf (Michigan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Asset Dedication: How to Grow Wealthy with the Next Generation of Asset Allocation (Hardcover)

Asset Dedication by Dr. Stephen J. Huxley is a must read for anyone contemplating retirement and for those who must manage money during retirement years. This book is written in a style that is easy to understand and grasp, and does not assume that the reader be a major in economics. The book is written in a clear lucid style and provides a very helpful education.

What is novel about the book is that it shows for the first time, that it is possible to invest retirement savings in a manner that they meet the unique needs of each retirement situation. In other words, the books does not blindly advocate an asset mix as those found commonly on almost all mutual fund sites.

The books advocates setting aside the appropriate mix of investments in high quality Bonds, while at the same time providing exposure to Index Stock Funds. But, there is no set magic ratio like 20/80 or 40/60 for Bonds/Stocks. Instead the book advocates and shows how you can set aside just enough money for income generation while at the same time gaining exposure to the stock market in increments of 3-10 years. The basic idea is to generate income for living expenses while at the same time gaining exposure to the stock market for adequate length of time. The book does not rely on just opinions. There is plenty of hard data and analysis to back up its premises.

The calculations provided in the book can also be carried out on the Internet Site for those who would like to play out different scenarios of accumulated savings and interest rates.

This book is a must read for anyone seriously contemplating retirement or anyone who is actively managing ones accumulated savings during retirement years. It provides a different working plan and perspective and one that should be reviewed.

This book is a must read !