PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Ronald Lagnado AU - Nassim Nicholas Taleb TI - Pension Funds Should Never Rely on Correlation AID - 10.3905/jai.2022.1.157 DP - 2022 Feb 04 TA - The Journal of Alternative Investments PG - jai.2022.1.157 4099 - https://pm-research.com/content/early/2022/02/04/jai.2022.1.157.short 4100 - https://pm-research.com/content/early/2022/02/04/jai.2022.1.157.full AB - The central decision for a pension fund is the allocation between stocks and bonds. For intellectual backup in making this decision, many rely on metrics and methods from Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT). We show how, historically, such an “optimal” portfolio is in effect the least optimal one, as it fails to protect against tail risk and under-allocates to the high-returning asset class. MPT fails in both risk control and real-world investment optimization.