Investment Recommendations?

Hi Guys,

Hoping you can give me some investing advice here. I by no means consider myself a competent investor and quite frankly do not want to bother tracking and buying individual stocks. Basically my sentiment is one of "set it and forget it".

I recently have been making a good amount of income after successfully launching a business and am looking to invest that money for the long term. I don't want to bother with individual stocks so it seems that funds or more specifically mutual funds is what I want to focus on.

Currently, I have investments in Vanguard S&P 500, REIT, Lending Club, and a Medical Equipment fund. So far all of these have been performing well over the past few years (but what hasn't right?) however, I wanted to get some thoughts as to if I should try adding or deleting some of the funds here. Maybe adding in energy, SPDR's, or something else?

What are your thoughts as to how I should build a nicely diversified and well performing long term no hassle portfolio? I'm really a noob when it comes to this but just looking to park some cash for the long term. Appreciate the help or any advice you might have. Thanks.

 
Best Response

Since no one else has responded, I'll give you my 2 cents...

Go with No Load, Low Fee Mutual Funds (or ETF's) screened for 4 or 5 stars by Morningstar (.com - free or premium accounts) with no transaction fees at your discount online brokerage (Fidelity, TD Ameritrade, Scottrade, Charles Schwab), allocated between stocks & bonds based on your risk tolerance -- stocks spread among large to small cap & international, REITS, and bonds short to medium term.

... Not suggesting these are right for you... just a starting point for investigation: My Mutual Funds... Bonds - MWTRX, TGMNX, THOPX, USHYX (or individual bonds) Large Cap Stocks - BPAV, YACKX Mid-Cap Stocks - JATTX Small Cap Stocks - BCSIX, HSCSX Foreign - OAKIX

My ETF's... Large - RPV, Mid - EZM & RPV, Small - SCHA, REIT's - VNQ.

 

If you're young & don't plan on touching this stuff for a while it is ok to go all equity. If you really want to be hands off buy diversified ETFs that will give you exposure to different geographic regions (US, Canada, Pacific, Developed Europe, Emerging Europe, etc, etc.) - frontier markets are hot right now. If you want to be a little more involved you can make country or industry specific bets like a Vietnam index fund or S&P 500 biotechs. In general opt for passively managed stuff in developed markets as it is really, really hard to generate alpha even before fees - after fees, when you consider front/end loads, maintenance, and performance fees, 95% of mutual funds are screwing investors. In emerging or frontier markets active management has more opportunity to add value because these markets are less liquid and less information is available leading to pricing inefficiencies. You can actually find some managers who are worth their fees. Find something with some track record that has consistently outperformed the country/regional index on a fee adjusted basis.

You can't kill the guys you trade with
 

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