I highly doubt it beats S&P 500 so you can do better by using Robinhood and invest into S&P 500 tracking stock like IVV. And the risk is more or less the same. It's not like Betterment would do well if S&P 500 tanks.
I used Wealthfront for a while and I switched to trading stocks.
The idea of roboadvisor sounded nice but their returns are sub-par because their allocation strategy is, by necessity, very risk averse. They put a lot of your money into bonds and similar sub-2% investements while in the last 50 years S&P returned 8% on average.
That 8% return is about as risk free as you can get and paying Betterment fees to do worse than that makes no sense to me.
BTW: if you invest in FAANGT (FAANG + Tesla) equal-weight portfolio, you'll do several times better than S&P 500 with very little risk. At lest for the next few years.
The S&P isn't risk-free! The only risk-free asset is US Treasury bonds, because we assume US Treasury can't default on payments.
The goal of a robo advisor, for most people, is not to beat the S&P, but to balance risk and reward according to the individual's time horizon and risk profile without any manual intervention.
Beating the S&P is a fun game for people who want to spend time on it, but this isn't for the general populace.
If you want to beat the S&P and you're okay with above-average risk, but also want a completely hands-off approach, I would suggest 100% PSLDX [1]. It's a hybrid active/passive mutual fund that uses buy derivatives (futures and swaps), collateralized by bonds, to boost S&P returns. The high (1.01%) fee only looks high until you look at the returns; most years, it does 20-30%. Its return in 2019 was 52%. In theory, it should do only slightly worse than the S&P in a bad year.
Another interesting futures-based fund is NTSX [2]. It's pretty new, but it's consistently beat the S&P since inception, and did very well in the March dip.
For what it's worth, I'd expect that leverage to come back to bite you in the ass in a rising interest rate environment. Granted, we haven't seen a sustained period of rising interest rates for 40+ years, but it's not obvious that that will continue.
I would say that PSLDX has proven itself. Max drawdown since inception (2008) is about the same as VFINX, less than VTIAX/VGTSX. Return in 2008 was -33%, compared to -37% for the S&P 500. In March, it dipped more than the S&P, but not terribly so. The only year it didn't significantly outperform the S&P was 2013.
> That 8% return is about as risk free as you can get
Yeah no. The S&P 500 lost about 35% of its value in 2008. If that's the year your kid starts college or you were planning to put down a big down payment on your first house, you'd be completely fucked.
I used to think the same way as you, but when you get a little older and major life milestones and/or retirement aren't distant concepts it'll change your perspective.
I think the standard advice is that whatever part of your savings you expect to spend in the next 5-10 years shouldn't go in the stock market, for exactly this reason.
> you can do better by using Robinhood and invest into S&P 500 tracking stock like IVV
That's an interesting idea I hadn't considered. I believe robo-advisers tend to beat the market by a little bit, but I could be wrong on that. I started investing in force at the end of 2016 and the time-weighted, annualized returns on the stock portion of my portfolio are 6.39%. So make of that what you will
> They put a lot of your money into bonds and similar sub-2% investements while in the last 50 years S&P returned 8% on average
Betterment lets you pick your percentage of stocks vs bonds; you can set it to whatever you want and your portfolio gets re-allocated to match. I'm young, so mine's set at 90% stocks. I imagine I'll gradually decrease that over time.
I use Wealthfront, you can change your risk tolerance the higher levels have very little in bonds.
One of my accounts i think is at like a 9 or a 10 (max 10) it currently says US stocks 36.4%, foreign stocks 31.9%, emerging 16%, dividend 10.3%, and muni bonds 4.7%, .6% cash.
I highly doubt it beats S&P 500 so you can do better by using Robinhood and invest into S&P 500 tracking stock like IVV. And the risk is more or less the same. It's not like Betterment would do well if S&P 500 tanks.
I used Wealthfront for a while and I switched to trading stocks.
The idea of roboadvisor sounded nice but their returns are sub-par because their allocation strategy is, by necessity, very risk averse. They put a lot of your money into bonds and similar sub-2% investements while in the last 50 years S&P returned 8% on average.
That 8% return is about as risk free as you can get and paying Betterment fees to do worse than that makes no sense to me.
BTW: if you invest in FAANGT (FAANG + Tesla) equal-weight portfolio, you'll do several times better than S&P 500 with very little risk. At lest for the next few years.