Third Quarter Was Worst in Four Years for North American Pensions: Report

North America’s pension funds, endowments and foundations returned a median of -4.53 percent in the 3^rd quarter of 2015 – which makes it the worst quarter for the country’s institutional investors in four years, according to a report from Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service (TUCS).

From Reuters:

“These plans, virtually all of them … were hurt by diversification” in the global equity space, because typically they add diversity by going to international or smaller U.S. equities, said Robert Waid, managing director at Wilshire Associates.

Both of those equity classes fell dramatically, he said, noting that the MSCI ACWI World ex USA Index shed 12.17 percent, while the Wilshire US Small-Cap Index fell 10.88 percent.

The period also marked the first back-to-back declining quarters since March 31, 2009, when markets were still reeling from 15 months of recession.

“When you’re starting to have comparisons that go back to the financial crisis … it shows that it’s a difficult investment environment,” Waid said.

[…]

Wilshire TUCS, a widely-used benchmark for institutional asset performance, includes performance and asset allocation data from roughly 1,700 plans representing about $3.7 trillion in assets.

Included in the study were public and private pensions, endowments and foundations.

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