Have retirement target date funds (TDF) from the principal offerors exhibited asset allocation wisdom over the past 20 years? In his February 2026 paper entitled "The Asset Allocation Wisdom of Wall Street", Harry Mamaysky classifies TDFs into risk buckets and constructs portfolios that replicate these buckets using low-cost exchange traded funds (ETF). Specifically, he replicates eight risk buckets from S&P 500 Index and U.S. Treasury ETFs with equity weights 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9 and 0.95 and compares TDFs to matching replicants. Using returns for all TDFs (mutual funds) from 14 offerors with target dates from 2005 through 2070, encompassing over $1 trillion in assets, he finds that:
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