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The Markets January 14, 2010
T. Rowe Takes Top Spot in Russell Target-Date Metrics
The T. Rowe Price Retirement Target-Date Fund family came out in the
lead of Russell Investments’ top five funds of the fourth quarter of
2009.
Reported by Fred Schneyer
The funds were determined by Russell’s recently unveiled Target-Date Metric comparison.
A Russell news release said its methodology, unveiled in September, measures how well a fund family performed during a specific time period, to allow investors a way to evaluate various target-date offerings (see “Russell Unveils Target-Date Fund Family Performance Metrics“).
The T. Rowe Price family came out with a 207.7 ratio for a one-year period through the end of 2009. Others in the top five for Russell’s one-year ranking included:
- JHancock2 Lifecycle (206.8)
- Oppenheimer Transition (194.8)
- AllianceBernstein Retirement Strategy (171.7)
- Franklin Templeton Retirement Target (171.5).
Russell said it compared the retirement wealth generated by a family of target-date funds to the wealth generated by some selected benchmark over typical historical intervals. The calculation took into account all aspects of the each family’s investment process, including active management, asset allocations within equity and fixed income, and glide path design.
The company said the weight attached to each fund’s return was determined by the location of each fund along the glide path and the pattern of cash contributions.
More information is available at www.russell.com/indexes/promo/target_date_metric.asp.
Russell Target-Date Metric
| Target-Date Fund Family | 3-year ratio through 4Q09 |
| Franklin Templeton Retirement | 104.6 |
| American Century LIVESTRONG | 98.9 |
| Wells Fargo Advantage | 95.1 |
| MFS Lifetime | 90.2 |
| JPMorgan Smart Retirement | 86.5 |
Source: Russell Investments