I left feeling I wouldn't want my money drifting around the world based on the whims of this group. Not only does this mumbo jumbo result in high expenses, but all that asset shifting makes the fund a market timer and, eventually, a failure. It no longer exists. That means you don't know what you're getting. It's difficult to compare returns of apples and oranges.
Performance is poor.
In 1994, a disastrous year in the stock and bond markets, the average asset allocation fund did worse than both market averages, with a loss of 3.05 percent, according to Morningstar Mutual Funds. A soothing name can hide a lot of sins. As it turned out, the fund was allocating its assets to very aggressive investments in '94, with 8 percent in derivatives tied to foreign interest rates and commodities, and nearly half in foreign securities, including 17 percent in Mexico when the peso crashed. The fund lost 6.6 percent for the year. So you need to learn to allocate your own assets.