It’s been just over five years since the S&P 500 closed at its all-time high on October 9, 2007. Saying “a lot” has happened since then wouldn’t even begin to do justice, but we’ll leave that as it is.

Keeping this information in mind, close your eyes (maybe keep one eye open to read) and imagine a middle-aged hard-working investor who wants to retire on time and put several kids through college.

It’s October 1, 2007, and that investor has exactly $150,000 in his Individual Retirement Account (IRA). The investor decides to hire a financial advisor to help manage his IRA, who happens to also partner with CLS Investments, LLC (CLS). After completing a CLS client profile, the investor scores out to a 70 risk budget. Risk budgeting is CLS’s proprietary methodology for measuring the risk characteristics and volatility of investments. Investors with a risk budget score of 70 will typically be invested in a portfolio with a risk level roughly equal to 70 percent of the risk of a diversified equity benchmark. Assume the investor, with advice from the financial advisor, decides to invest in CLS’s ETF Strategy. At this point, the investor has no idea he just bought in right before the market’s all-time high.

Fast forward one year to October 2008, and the investor’s $150,000 nest egg has been nearly cut  in half. The pain is almost too much to bear, so the investor calls his financial advisor, asking to be pulled out of the market. The financial advisor, with reassurance from CLS, advises the investor to stick with his financial plan and remain invested. Despite obvious anxiety, the investor decides to trust the advice that was given and remains invested in CLS’s ETF Strategy.

Now, it’s the end of the third-quarter of 2012, five years later. How has the investor’s original $150,000 investment performed? Even after all the large market swings, company layoffs, economic hardships, and related financial crisis pains, the account value is now $156,330.

During this entire time, there were no other contributions to the IRA, management fees were removed from the account, and the investor still managed to make back his initial investment plus an additional 4.22 percent.

Following are the composite cumulative returns of the CLS ETF Strategy for each applicable risk budget range. The returns are representative of the time period from 10/1/2007 – 9/28/2012:

RB               Return*

100              -1.64%

87-100        -3.79%

71-86           -1.05%

57-70          8.15%

40-56           13.53%

30-39          N/A

 *Cumulative, 10/1/2007-9/28/2012

What were some other investment options available to the investor? He could have gone to cash at or near the market low, put his money into one of the largest and most popular equity mutual funds available at the time (like the ones below, for example), or decide that active management was no longer appealing and switch his investments to an S&P 500 index fund. The performance for each of these other investment options over the same time period ranged from -21.77% to 13.29%:

Fund                                                             Return*

Fidelity Contrafund                                         13.29%

SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY)                              3.82%

Vanguard Index 500 Investor                            3.55%

American Capital Income Builder                     2.29%

Growth Fund of America                                -0.77%

Dodge & Cox Stock Fund                               -9.78%

Fidelity Magellen                                         -15.27%

Vanguard Total International Stock Index      -21.77%

*Cumulative, 10/1/2007-9/28/2012

While a typical investor would not want his or her entire investment placed in equities, many people at this point in 2007 seemed to have forgotten about the bursting of the tech bubble and subsequent market downturn in 2000. Many were convinced that stocks would just continue to appreciate. Conversely, the feeling about the stock market today is generally pretty negative for those who don’t follow it closely.

If you told people today that they would have made just over 4 percent since the market high in 2007 by staying invested in the CLS ETF Strategy, I don’t know if they would have believed you! However, as you can see, those who stuck with it and stayed invested ended up all right.

Comments provided by guest writer Grant Engelbart, Investment Research Analyst

1859-CLS-11/14/2012