Generation funds : A comparison between the generation funds in Sweden

In the future the Swedish pension system will face major problems. With an increasing aging population combined with a decreasing share of working population the financing of the pension system is becoming a bigger problem than previously predicted. This means the individual himself will have a bigger responsibility to invest money for their future retirement. It has been shown that a large proportion of the people who invests for their future pension have neither the interest nor the time to actively invest their pension capital. To make it easier for those who invest for their retirement, some Swedish banks have created so-called generation funds. These funds adapts to the age of the person who invests. This means that the funds risk decreases with the age of the investor. Therefore, this results in the fact that the individual who has invested in the generation funds does not need to worry about lowering the risk when they are approaching retirement. The purpose of this study is to investigate and compare the different generation funds offered on the Swedish market. Further study is also intended to show whether an application of two more active strategies as investment strategies has had a higher return than investing in the generation funds. In examining the generation funds, evaluation dimensions Treynor and Sharpe ratio have been used to calculate the risk-adjusted returns. Furthermore, an empirical test has been conducted in which a monthly saving of 500 SEK per month has been combined with a buy-and-hold strategy to see which of the banks generation funds have provided the highest returns during the period 2004-2011. This has in turn been compared with applying the moving average as a technical investment strategy to identify buy and sell signals