http://alephblog.com/2007/07/09/the-fed-model/

For what it is worth, the model said switch from stocks to corporate bonds in August 2008. It still says bonds are better now.

these cats may get a little closer, though they don’t get to 401(k)-level granularity..

http://www.trimtabs.com/research_description.html

and, re: Fidelity, I’d imagine the same, if they were paying attention, they’d monetize that info stream by offering subscriptions to that data, not to say that they aren’t..

Thanks for those retirement info links. The one sentence that said the most to me was, “Fidelity’s survey also found that just 6.1% of plan participants made exchanges among investment options in the fourth quarter [of 2008].”

The available data is too old. Ideally, it would be nice to track daily changes in real time. I imagine Fidelity does exactly that, but i doubt they freely cough up the information.

The PPEM calculates the SPX P/E by dividing the SPX price by Prior
Peak Earnings, a method developed by John Hussman, manager of the Hussman
Funds. (hussmanfunds.com) It orients valuations to the long-term
rising trend of earnings growth as defined by peak-to-peak earnings.

Back in 2004-2005, I used to say, “Well, if interest rates go to 1%, should we just put a 100 PE on the market then? Because we will be in the Great Depression part two.”

I was being facetious at the time–little did I know….

BTW, Clifford Asness at AQR Capital also did some very good work on the stupidity of the Fed Model thesis.

3Q ’008 update on ‘retirement fund’ biz, incl. 401(k)

from an academic research POV: http://w4.stern.nyu.edu/salomon/docs/assetmanagement/asset_management_abstracts.htm

try this, as well: http://www.ici.org/stats/mf/index.html#TopOfPage

ICI is the industry organ..

http://www.ici.org/

This article has a lot of info for you…from LA Times:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2009/01/401k-wall-stree.html

Highlights:

Boston-based Fidelity, the administrator for 401(k) plans covering more than 11 million workers at 17,100 companies, said the average plan balance tumbled to $50,200 last year from $69,200 in 2007.

The totals include contributions workers made during the year. So actual investment losses were worse than the 27% drop in the average balance. The average U.S. stock mutual fund slid 36% for the year; the average foreign stock fund plunged 44%.

Still, most people continued to add to their accounts in the fourth quarter, even as markets dived, Fidelity said.

Fidelity’s survey also found that just 6.1% of plan participants made exchanges among investment options in the fourth quarter, suggesting that there was no rush out of stock funds and into safer options.

Shouldn’t this data be available somewhere? Either from employers or whoever runs the employer 401-k plans? Seems like it would be very easy to track the investment changes at one large company and get a good idea of what employees are doing throughout the country.

Re: the Fed Model…i think Jim Stack has put the dagger in that theory more than a few times.