Portfolio Tracking of TIAA-CREF STOCK Variable Annuity

[Maestro G]

Hello Bogleheads,

Would anyone have a suggestion as to the most accurate performance tracking of the TIAA-CREF Variable Annuity Stock account (my 403b plan) using Morningstar's "Portfolio Manager" or any other portfolio tracker? CREF's oldest stock annuity is currently a composite of the following benchmarks with these % allocations:

Russel 3000 - 74%
MSCI-EAFE + Canada - 21%
MSCI-EAFE + Canada Small Cap 2%
MSCI Emerging Mrkts - 3%

The portfolio employs pure indexing, enhanced indexing and active management. There doesn't seem to be an analogous CREF fund or other etf that can serve as an appropriate proxy for easy tracking purposes and input. The best proxy would seem to be the TIAA-CREF 2050 Lifecycle Retirement fund (TLFRX), but that is compromised by the inclusion of bonds at about 10%. How might others handle this?

Thanks so much for any assistance,

Maestro G

[Levett]

Maestro--

TIAA-CREF does the work for you if you mean tracking the fund's performance against its benchmark--the CREF Composite Index you mentioned above.

Have you seen this page (I hope the screen comes up!)? Look at the "performance comparison" section and remember that there's no ER for the composite index but there is an ER for CREF Stock.

http://www.tiaa-cref.org/performance/re ... /1001.html

Bob U.

[Maestro G]

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the reply. What I am actually interested in is a suitable proxy for the CREF account (given its component characteristics and methodology) that I can input into the Morningstar Portfolio manager that will enable me to track its performance relative to the other constituents of my portfolio. Since its a annuity there is no "ticker" to input. I'm wondering how others might deal with this in the simplest way?

Thanks again,

Maestro G

[sscritic]

Moneydance and Gnucash use the perl Finance::Quote module to import quotes. Finance::Quote reads the data from the TIAA-CREF website and can get TIAA data for

Stock: CREFstok
Money Market: CREFmony
Equity Index: CREFequi
Inf-Linked Bond: CREFinfb
Bond Market: CREFbond
Social Choice: CREFsoci
Global Equities: CREFglob
Growth: CREFgrow
TIAA Real Estate: TIAAreal

plus others. (Although I have been having trouble with CREFinfb recently.)

Are you tied to Morningstar for tracking your portfolio? Have you tried CREFstok as the ticker in Morningstar? (I don't use Morningstar, so I don't know what it uses to get quotes). If getting quotes on a regular basis is what you mean by the term "track its performance," then CREFstok can be used by Finance::Quote and programs that use Finance::Quote to track its performance.

[livesoft]

Here's what I did: I sold all my CREF stock fund. Problem solved.

But I guess you want a single proxy fund so that you can do Portfolio X-ray to see your asset allocation. I don't have a single fund solution, but if I come across one, I post back here. Some American funds are so big, they have to own everything: US, Foreign, EM. Have you look at one of them as a proxy?

[KatyJ]

Delete - Unnecessary question.