PrefBlog

Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan had a really bad year due to market timing:

Teachers fell short of the 8.7-per-cent benchmark it uses to measure its own performance, as losses on real estate and infrastructure dragged down returns.
…
One reason for the fund’s underperformance was its cautious stance toward the stock market. The publicly traded stocks Teachers owns did well, gaining 20 per cent last year against a 20.3-per-cent benchmark, but they make up just 10 per cent of its assets. At the start of last year, Teachers was betting on “some correction in listed stock markets, which didn’t happen,” chief executive officer Jo Taylor said in an interview.
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High interest rates prompted Teachers to mark down asset values in its real estate portfolio, which lost 5.9 per cent, as well as its infrastructure arm, which lost 2.8 per cent. Both portfolios fell far short of internal benchmarks, gaining 2 per cent and 7.6 per cent.

I got curious about the longer term performance, so I looked up their performance report and was very disappointed. Where’s their triangle? I want to run my finger down their five-year rolling returns vs. their benchmark and get some idea of trends, but this will not be possible without a great deal of work on my part, which isn’t going to happen.

This is before we even get to the question of their $58.5-billion private equity portfolio and its benchmark; God only knows how accurate the valuations in either group might be. As I keep saying until you guys are sick of it, the purpose of private equity is to enable lying to your clients. Mark my words, one day there’s going to be a monster blow-up and then – and only then – will the clients and their supposed protectors get interested.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 7:46 pm and is filed under Market Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.