Understanding the Leveraged Life Cycle Investment Strategy for Defined-Contribution Plan Investors

We investigate whether the leveraged life cycle strategy, in which leverage is used to buy stocks when investors are young, is able to produce better retirement outcomes than other investment strategies that are currently offered by defined contribution plan providers and those suggested in the literature. Using both historical and bootstrap simulations for the period of 1900-2011 in the US, we find that the leveraged life cycle strategy has an ability to reduce risk, though this ability is relatively insignificant. Further, the leveraged life cycle strategy shows a comparative advantage over the balanced strategy. However, the leveraged life cycle strategy produces retirement outcomes inferior to conventional life cycle strategy, and demonstrates significant inferiority when compared to dynamic life cycle strategy.