Monte Carlo analysis is commonly used to evaluate retirement spending plans - but our cognitive and behavioural biases may interfere with proper interpretation of the results.

The key trait for relating to investors in the future will be the one skill that our brains are not programmed to receive from a computer - empathy.

With the onward marching of computing power, our transition from being "knowledge workers" to "relationship workers" may be here sooner than we realise.

Beware using risk tolerance assessment tools that blend risk tolerance and risk capacity into a single result. The two need to be measured separately.

How often should a portfolio be rebalanced? Rather than the conventional wisdom of rebalancing at fixed time intervals, a superior methodology is tolerance band rebalancing.

While rebalancing may be helpful as a risk management strategy, it may actually reduce long-term returns. But that isn't a reason to avoid it.

A growing body of research on the actual spending habits of retirees finds spending declines over time, implying retirees may not need to be saving as much to retire.

Active Share can be an effective way to evaluate the appropriateness of a fund manager's fee. Low Active Share funds should come with index-fund-like fees.

Perhaps the best way to manage sequence of return risk in the years leading up to retirement and thereafter is simply to build up and then use a reserve of bonds to weather the storm.

Individuals underestimate the degree to which their lives will change over the long-term, so how can practitioners build portfolios to meet clients' future needs?

Research suggests that we have remarkably little insight into our future preferences. So a challenge of goals-based investing is that we save towards a goal that isn't what we want when the time comes.

The "best" retirement income strategy may be very different depending on whether you measure based on wealth, spending, probabilities of success, magnitudes of failure, or utility functions that weigh both the upside and downside risks.

Even multi-asset-class portfolios aren't always really diversified. Being properly diversified means always having to say you're sorry about some investment that's not moving in the same direction as the rest.

Sequencing risk is just as relevant for accumulators as it is retirees. Decreasing growth asset exposures in the lead up to retirement may be a very appealing risk management strategy.

Risk tolerance is a key constraint in designing a portfolio, but it should also be considered a key constraint in establishing their goals for investing in the first place.

Arguably, the future of designing portfolios for accumulators in particular is that the asset class and sector exposures of the portfolio should be adjusted around the risk/return characteristics of the worker's job.

Focusing on a client's investment portfolio alone ignores their greatest asset - their ability to continue earning income through the fruits of their labor, also known as their "human capital". Deciding how much risk to take with financial capital given a client's human capital risks is crucial.

The danger that “sequence of return risk” can devastate a retirement portfolio is both increasingly recognised and frequently misunderstood. Three concrete, research-driven strategies can help manage it.

A simple ratchet-style "safe" withdrawal rate approach, where spending is increased by 10% any time the portfolio rises more than 50% above its starting value, beats the traditional 4% rule, generating equal or better retirement spending, even while being conservative enough to not require a spending cut in the event of a market pullback in the future.

The surprising result of a recent study is that the "conventional" view that earnings rise steadily (above inflation) throughout our careers is not accurate. Good spending habits established early on can make an astounding difference to wealth over a lifetime.