In past market downturns, I’ve always maintained that an investor should stay the course, as long as she has a suitable asset allocation that she is comfortable with. Even though markets have been losing big chunks of their value seemingly every single day, the mantra remains the same: hold the course. However, a number of [...]
Some investors advocate tactical asset allocation (TAA) or the practice of adjusting the portfolio mix of stocks, bonds and cash to economic and/or market conditions. In his book Contrarian Investment Strategies, David Dreman notes that while it’s true that an investor who could successfully TAA could grow money on trees, TAA is difficult to practice [...]
When I started the Sleepy Portfolio, I intended to track it as my personal portfolio benchmark and as such the portfolio allocations reflect my personal investment goals and risk tolerance. I am frequently asked how an investor should tailor this model portfolio to suit their investment goals. In this post, I’ll try and answer some [...]
The Claymore Investment website has a nifty asset allocator tool that lets investors construct model portfolios by mixing different asset classes and examine how they would have performed in the past. The tool is similar to the asset mixer available on Norm Rothery’s Stingy Investor website. The Claymore asset allocator tool though includes asset classes [...]
There is a larger question that must be asked in discussing the recent introduction of new Claymore funds tracking global real estate and infrastructure: just how many asset classes does a portfolio need? How much more diversification benefits can real estate, infrastructure, commodities, or even more exotic asset classes provide? In Unconventional Success, David Swensen [...]
Stocks have staged a significant recovery after falling sharply in the first quarter of 2008. The TSX Composite is up about 19% from its low in January and the S&P 500 is up about 11% from its mid-March swoon. If the lows reached in the first quarter was indeed the market bottom, we can classify [...]
The portion of your portfolio that should be allocated to equities depends on your ability, willingness and need to take risk. One of the factors affecting the ability to take risk is time horizon: investors with a long time horizon can allocate a greater percentage to equities than investors with a shorter time horizon. Larry [...]
