Alabama looks to put more in stock market

Retirement Systems of Alabama, Montgomery, plans to shift assets from cash to its $11 billion domestic equity portfolio this year if interest rates stay low and the stock market continues to stagnate. Marc Green, CIO of the $25.8 billion fund, said the system has increased its domestic equity portfolio by 1%, or about $100 million, already this year. The system has 6% to 7% of its total assets in cash. "You can't make much money off a Treasury (bond) yielding 4.15%," said Mr. Green. "If the market stays the same or goes down, we'll put more money into our active and large-cap funds because there will be attractive opportunities (to invest in undervalued stocks). We don't know how much in total we'd increase it by." The system's remaining allocation is 29% to fixed income, 12.5% to international equity and 9% in real estate and short-term investments. The system manages all of its assets in-house.