Martin Steward: Trigger unhappy

By Martin StewardOctober 2011 (Magazine)

When does a tactical loosening of a strategy become a panic? And when does panic start to undermine the strategy itself? If your strategy is liability-driven investing (LDI), you might well ask. It wasn’t long ago that plummeting yields were trumpeted as the vindication of LDI. At the end of 2009, celebrating the sixth anniversary of the pioneering Friends Provident Pension Scheme/Merrill Lynch transaction, Redington observed that UK 30-year real yields had fallen 126bps in that time. Around the same time Lane Clark and Peacock compared the 10% loss on the average FTSE100 pension scheme’s assets with the 3% gain on Friends Provident’s during 2008.