Successful Portfolio: Burton Malkiel on Simplicity for Investing

MoneyWatch Investment Mantras
1. Buy index funds.
2. Diversify your assets.
3. Keep costs low.

Princeton economist Burton Malkiel says simplicity is key to a successful portfolio.

  • In the past decade, index funds consistently outperformed two-thirds of all actively managed funds.
  • Bonds did very well during the last decade of stock market losses and stagnation.
  • Diversify internationally and into emerging markets.
  • All you really need to be thoroughly diversified are in stocks, bonds, and cash.
  • China has been the most rapidly growing economy in the world for the last twenty years and will continue to grow.
  • Look for low cost investments! In the investment business, you get what you don’t pay for.

Posted

in

,

by

Comments

2 responses to “Successful Portfolio: Burton Malkiel on Simplicity for Investing”

  1. […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Debt Loan, Geoffrey Hale. Geoffrey Hale said: Successful Portfolio: Burton Malkiel on Simplicity for Investing (http://www.geoffreyhale.com/blog/?p=712) […]

  2. Arthur Regen Avatar
    Arthur Regen

    If the objective of investing is wealth creation, Index Funds – on average – ater fees,taxes and inflation – over the last 20 years – have produced a net return of about 3%, then Index Funds falls short of the mark. At 3%, using the rule of 72, it has taken 24 years to double a principal sum.How many 24 year periods does the average index fund investor have in a working lifetime? Not many.

    While,the Index Fund inveestor will do slightly better than the average mutual fund investor's net return of 1-2%,it is disingenuous to suggest Index Funds is a reasonable avenue to wealth creation except to 8+ figure asset portfolios.

    Between the 13,000 or so open-end mutual funds and all the 7,350 common stocks on the three major U.S exchanges, after rigorous filtering and screening, there are no more than 100 eligible securities that are qualified wealth creators – beating the market by a factor of 2 to 10.

    Ironically, there is not one single approved method available in a $15 trillion industry to consistently find these securities.

    Why?

    Since 1980 with the advent of computers, software and the internet,all the necessary tools are available to both the public and the industry.

    Yet nothing of a even a quasi-scientific nature has appeared.

    What has appeared is a plethora of "get- rich- schemes","tips","slogans"…that have no scientific credibility and do not overcome a 20 year period of zero creation recently confirmed by the Federal Reserve Board and Dr. Paul Krugman.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *