On May 6, 2010, the Department of Labor (DOL) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) jointly published a bulletin addressed to retirement plan investors who may be considering investing in target date funds. The bulletin – Investor Bulletin: Target Date Retirement Funds (the Bulletin) – is available on both the DOL and SEC Web sites. The Bulletin is one of several steps that the DOL and SEC plan to take to address issues that surfaced from the performance of target date funds in late 2008 and early 2009. That performance, and the role of target date funds as retirement savings vehicles, was the subject of a joint hearing by the DOL and SEC in June 2009.

The Bulletin is positioned as a primer on target date funds for individual investors, and in particular retirement plan participants. The Bulletin explains that...