Pension Funds Management and Investments

The State Treasurer's Office administers the investment policies and strategies adopted by the Vermont Pension Investment Committee for the benefit of the Vermont State Retirement System, Vermont State Teachers' Retirement System and Vermont Municipal Employees Retirement System.

Asset Allocation

Asset allocation is essential to the investment performance of the plan. In order to insulate the portfolios from short-term market fluctuations, the three pension systems diversify assets across a broad group of asset classes, which enables each portfolio to maintain stability through market cycles of the different asset classes. Each system's assets are invested in stocks, bonds, global asset allocation strategies and real estate, with an additional small allocation to alternative partnerships. These investment categories have imperfect correlations, so if one category is faltering, another may be doing exceedingly well. This strategy minimizes the effects of short term volatility that occurs within each asset class and is totally different from market timing, in which an investor attempts to predict the ups and downs of various markets. In such a strategy, substantial losses can occur if the timing decision is incorrect.

Pension Funds Asset Allocation

As of June 30, 2007

** Global Asset Allocation (GAA) investment strategies allow for investment manager discretion to continually reallocate investment funds between domestic and international debt, equity and other asset classes. Holdings in VPIC GAA portfolios include market index funds, market index futures, fixed income and equity securities, and mutual funds.