Tag: Asset Allocation
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Retirees Need To Lower Investment Expectations
There’s nothing like taking 20% or 30% off portfolio values to really put the concept of risk into focus. This story about a cardiac surgeon is a positive one as it shows how one person recognized the volatility of the markets from the dot-com bubble burst in 2000 – 2002, and was positioned well during…
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Retirement Red Zone
The Retirement Red Zone is a name that Prudential gives the five years before and after retirement. Red Zone is a term generally reserved for the twenty yards before the end zone in American football and it’s an appropriate term. In both football and retirement, mistakes in the red zone are magnified. Make a mistake…
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How To Respond to Market Drops
Walter Updegrave recently received a question from a reader that lost over 10% of their retirement assets in the last few months (since June). The reader was wondering what they were supposed to do as they are 58 years old. Can he “wait it out?” Should he pull out and cut his losses? Walter outlines…
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Rebalance Your Portfolio For Greater Gains
Buy low sell high, that’s the mantra of Wall Street (actually, it’s probably “Buy low very often, sell high very often,” but I digress), and one that you can achieve every single time you rebalance your portfolio. Rebalancing your portfolio is a task that no one likes to do because it’s so mechanical, it’s so…
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Target Retirement Funds May Not Be Better
Conventional wisdom states that you should take risks when you’re younger, become more conservative when you’re older, and your finances will be better off for it. This is embodied in the typical advice for asset allocation – take 120, subtract your age, and you should have that value, as a percent, allocated towards equities in…
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How To Analyze 401(k) Fund Offerings
If you just opened your 401(k) or are investigating where you should be invested, my advice to you is to keep things as simple as possible. If it’s your first 401(k), or your first time looking at it with this company, it can be a little overwhelming to figure out what you should be doing.…