401(k) plans have plenty of investment vehicles in which to allocate their funds: equities, trusts, government securities. It's interesting to see how the money flows around between these different options.
For example, government securities. These include Savings and Treasury bonds, Treasury bills, FNMA, and GNMA.
Looking only at plans that had active investments with Uncle Sam in 2010, net assets rose by 15 percent over the prior year, and the value of assets invested in the government mostly kept pace at 14 percent (a roughly $2.3 billion increase).
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Despite the overall allocation amongst these plans in government securities holding steady at 5.4 percent, a majority of 401(k)s did in fact lower their allocation – 78 percent. In fact, 18 percent of them got out of the government game altogether, dropping half a billion dollars from the government in favor of other investment vehicles.
This seems to suggest a greater willingness of plan participants and sponsors to move out from the safe harbor they retreated to following the financial crisis, so if you want my take, I'd say that 78% percent of those sponsors are confident in the overall economy (18 percent are running under full sail).
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