Once again, we know we’re not supposed to watch these numbers too closely, but we just can’t seem to help ourselves. The Investment Company Institute’s tally of the nation’s retirement assets finds a whopping $28 trillion for the first quarter of 2018.
However, it was a slight decline, most likely due to the stock market’s falloff, of 0.8 percent from December 2017.
Americans held $7.7 trillion in all employer-based DC retirement plans for the quarter (down 0.5 percent), of which $5.3 trillion was held in 401k plans.
Target date fund assets totaled $1.1 trillion, up 1.4 percent from December. Retirement accounts held the bulk of target date assets, 87 percent of which were held through DC plans (67 percent of the total) and IRAs (20 percent).
IRAs held $9.2 trillion at the end of the first quarter. Forty-seven percent of IRA assets, or $4.3 trillion, was invested in mutual funds. With $2.4 trillion, equity funds were the most common type of funds held in IRAs, followed by $928 billion in hybrid funds.
In addition to 401k plans, $535 billion was held in other private-sector DC plans, $988 billion in 403b plans, $318 billion in 457 plans, and $566 billion in the Federal Employees Retirement System’s Thrift Savings Plan (TSP).
Mutual funds managed $3.5 trillion, or 68 percent, of assets held in 401k plans at the end of March 2018. With $2.1 trillion, equity funds were the most common type of funds held in 401k plans, followed by $978 billion in hybrid funds, which include target date funds.
Government defined benefit (DB) plans—including federal, state, and local government plans—held $5.9 trillion in assets as of the end of March 2018, a 1.6 percent decrease from the end of December 2017.