Blueprint for a Better Portfolio
Mutual funds were supposed to make our financial lives easier. But ever since, folks have struggled mightily to ignore this notion.
Rather than sitting quietly with a diverse collection of funds, investors try to be way too clever, chasing hot performers and using funds to make massive sector bets. Along the way, they often wreak havoc with their returns.
Want to do it right? For now, don't even think about which funds you ought to buy. Instead, begin with this question: What sort of portfolio should you build?
Dividing the Pie
To answer the question, you need to consider why you are investing and how far off your financial goals lie. Maybe you are saving for your first house, or your retirement, or your kid's college education.
FUNDING YOUR FUTURE
See the previous installment in this Getting Going series.
PORTFOLIO POINTERS
See an archive of the Getting Going Sunday series on building a portfolio, managing retirement and investing in index funds.
Once you identify your goals, you will be better placed to settle on the right mix of stocks and conservative investments. If you are within five years of needing your money, I would dump everything into a short-term bond fund or a money-market fund.
But if your goals lie further off, you can take more risk, by investing in stocks. Even if you have nerves of steel, however, I would still keep 10% of your portfolio in bonds or a money-market fund. Conversely, even if you have little stomach for risk, I would still stash 25% in stocks.
Fact is, if you invest entirely in conservative investments or entirely in stocks, your portfolio will be unnecessarily risky. Bonds often fare well when stocks are suffering, and vice versa. By owning both, you reduce your portfolio's year-to-year fluctuations, thus making it easier to stick with your funds at times of market turmoil.
Taking Interest
As you seek to control risk, don't just decide what percentage of your portfolio you will invest in stocks and in conservative investments. Also drill down one level further, deciding how much you will invest in each stock and bond-market sector.
TALKING STRATEGY
Building a mutual-fund portfolio? Try one of these four strategies.
? Simple but Sweet: Get one-stop investment shopping with a life-cycle fund.
? Keeping Active: Set portfolio percentages for large stocks, small companies, foreign shares and other market sectors, and then pick actively managed funds to build your target portfolio.
? Anything but Average: Lock in market returns by buying a diverse mix of index funds, including a U.S. total-market index fund, a foreign-stock index fund and a bond-index fund.
? Core and Explore: Buy index funds as your portfolio's core holding and then add promising actively managed funds.
As I mentioned last week, the proliferation of funds has been accompanied by increasing specialization. For instance, among conservative investments, you can now diversify by geography, credit quality and maturity.
In other words, you might buy funds that give you exposure to U.S. and foreign bonds, to high-quality and low-quality (or "junk") bonds and to short-term, intermediate-term and long-term bonds.
Put it all together, and you could conceivably own separate funds that invest in money-market instruments, high-quality short-term bonds, high-quality intermediate-term bonds, high-quality long-term bonds, inflation-indexed Treasury bonds, high-yield junk bonds, high-quality foreign bonds and emerging-market debt.
But buying all these funds would be overkill. If you don't have much money or conservative investments are a small portion of your portfolio, I would focus on building a core position in high-quality U.S. bonds. You might get that exposure by purchasing a short- or intermediate-term bond fund.
On the other hand, if conservative investments account for over 30% of your portfolio, you'll probably want to spread your bets a little more widely. But that doesn't mean you have to buy separate funds for every category.
If you hunt around, you can find funds that wrap a bunch of sectors into a single portfolio. For instance, funds like Fidelity Strategic Income and T. Rowe Price Spectrum Income own high-quality, high-yield and foreign bonds.
Taking Stock
If you think the variety of possible bond funds is bewildering, check out stock funds. Among stock funds, you can diversify by geography, company size, stock-picking strategy and even market sector.
To that end, you might purchase a U.S. large-company growth fund, a large-company value fund, a small-company growth fund, a small-company value fund, a foreign large-company fund, a foreign small-company fund and an emerging-markets fund. (Growth funds hunt for stocks with rapid sales and earnings growth, while value funds favor stocks that appear cheap based on current earnings or corporate assets.)
Some mutual-fund junkies go even further, throwing in stock funds that represent alternative asset classes, such as gold stocks and real-estate investment trusts. Result? If you let yourself go, you could easily end up with 10 stock funds, each of which invests in a distinct part of the global market.
But once again, the key is to make sure you have exposure to certain core sectors, namely large U.S. stocks, small U.S. companies and developed foreign markets. And as with the conservative portion of your portfolio, you can tap into these three areas without buying a heap of funds.
For instance, as a core holding, you might buy a life-cycle fund, such as one of Fidelity Investments' Freedom funds, T. Rowe Price Group's Retirement funds or Vanguard Group's LifeStrategy or Target Retirement funds. Each of these funds combines a smattering of stock and bond-market sectors in a single fund, thus giving you one-stop investment shopping.
Going in Style
Finally, you need to give some thought to fund-management style. Funds can be divided into two camps, actively managed and index. This is a particular issue with stock funds.
The vast majority of stock funds are actively managed, which means the manager tries to pick stocks that will deliver market-beating returns. But unfortunately, most funds fail miserably in this endeavor.
As a result, investors have increasingly turned to market-tracking index funds. But in the debate between indexing and active management, you don't necessarily have to choose. Instead, some investors anchor their portfolio with a collection of index funds and then try to boost returns by adding active managers.
Once you have a plan for your portfolio, including how much you will invest in each market sector and what sort of funds you will buy, it's time to start selecting funds for each slot in your portfolio. But how do you pick these funds? That's where we turn next week.
如何规划更合理的投资组合
共同基金本来是为了让我们理财更容易，但实际上，从共同基金诞生以来，人们始终将这点抛诸脑后。
投资者并没有手握多样化的基金组合安然等待，而是想方设法多盈利，追逐热门股，用基金在某些板块上豪赌。这样的话，他们往往会在收益方面受到沉重打击。
想知道正确的做法吗？当下，不要想你应该买哪些基金。相反，你应该首先考虑这个问题：你应该建立什么样的投资组合？
合理划分
要回答上述问题，你需要思考一下自己为什么要投资，你的财务目标离自己有多远。也许你投资是为了购买自己的第一套住房，也许是积攒退休金，或者你子女的大学教育费。
一旦你明确了目标，你将能够很好地平衡，从而确立股票和保守性投资工具之间的合理比例。如果你在5年内就需要自己的钱，那么我建议你将全部资金都投入到短期债券基金或货币市场基金上。
但如果你的目标是长期的，你就可以投资股票，承担更大的风险。但是，即便你有钢铁般的意志，我仍然要建议你将投资组合的10%用在债券基金或者货币市场基金上。反之，即便你毫无承担风险的胆量，我也要建议你投资25%在股票基金上。
原因在于：如果你完全投资保守性投资工具，或者全部投资股票基金，你的投资组合将承担不必要的风险。当股市下跌的时候，债券通常表现很好，而当债市下跌的时候，股市则走强。同时投资两者，你就降低了投资组合在各年的波动程度，因此，你也就更容易在市场动荡的时候坚守基金了。
获取利息
当你需要控制风险时，不要仅仅考虑你在投资组合中多少比例分配给股票，多少分给保守性投资工具。与此同时，你还要考虑更深入的一个层次：决定自己在每只股票和债市每个板块上将投资多少。
上周我曾经提到过，基金的激增一直与日益发展的专门化趋势相伴而行。比如说，在保守性的投资工具方面，现在你可以通过地域差别、信贷质量和到期期限等来实现多样化。
换句话说，你购买的基金可以是投资美国或海外债券、优质或垃圾债券、短期或中长期债券等各种工具的。
综合说来，你可以拥有在以下各自不同工具上投资的基金：货币市场工具、优质的短期债券、优质的中期债券、优质的长期债券、追踪通货膨胀指数的美国国债、高收益的垃圾债券、优质的海外债券及新兴市场债券等等。
但是，购买全部这些基金将风险过大。如果你没有太多资金，或者保守性投资工具在你的投资组合中比例很小，我会建议你考虑在投资组合中确立优质美国债券的核心地位。你可以通过购买短期或中期的债券基金来实现这个目标。
另一方面，如果在你的投资组合中，保守性投资工具的比例超过30%，那么你很可能该做的就是让你的资金更加分散一点。当然，这并不是说你必须购买每个类别的基金。
如果你到处找找，你会发现有些基金将几种类别集中到一个组合里了。比如说，Fidelity的Strategic Income和T. Rowe Price的Spectrum Income之类的基金，它们投资优质、高收益的海外债券。
投资股票
如果你觉得各种各样的债券令人头晕眼花，不妨考虑股票基金。对股票基金来说，你可以通过不同的地理位置、公司规模、选股策略和市场板块来实现多样化。
为了投资多样化，你可以购买美国大公司的增长型基金、美国大公司的价值型基金、美国小公司的增长型基金、美国小公司的价值型基金、外国大公司的基金、外国小公司的基金以及新兴市场基金。（增长型基金投资销售额和收益快速增长的企业的股票，而价值型基金则青睐基于当前收益或公司资产计算显得廉价的股票。）
有些共同基金投资者更进一步，选择了投资其他资产的股票基金，比如黄金股票和房地产信托投资公司的股票。结果如何？如果你放任自己的选择，你轻而易举地就能挑出10只股票基金，每只基金分别投资全球市场的不同板块。
但同样，关键之处在于确保你购买了某些核心的投资工具，也就是说，你购买了美国大型股票、美国小型公司股票以及国外成熟市场的股票。由于在你的投资组合中已经有了保守性的投资工具，所以你不用大量购买基金，就可以直接从上述3个市场上获利。
比如说，作为核心的持有资产，你可能购买了一个终生享有的基金，像Fidelity Investments的自由基金(Freedom funds)、T. Rowe Price Group的退休基金(Retirement funds)及Vanguard Group的LifeStrategy和Target Retirement基金。这些基金都是将少量的股票和部份债券集中到一个单一基金中，从而为你提供一站式的投资选择。
了解风格
最后，你需要考虑一下基金经理的投资风格。基金可以分成两大类：积极管理型和指数型。这是只有股票基金才会面临的问题。
大多数股票基金都是积极管理型的，就是说基金经理总是试图选取收益超过市场平均水平的股票。但很不幸，多数基金很难做到这一点。
于是，越来越多的投资者转向跟踪市场的指数型基金。当然，你没有必要非在积极管理型基金和指数型基金之间进行艰难的选择，相反，有些投资者将自己的投资组合调整为指数基金，然后通过增加积极管理型基金经理的办法来尝试提高收益。
一旦你确定了投资组合的计划，包括你在某个市场板块上打算投资多少，你将购买哪类基金等等，接下来你就需要为投资组合的每个部份开始选择基金了。那么如何选择呢？这是我们下周将要讨论的话题。
