Making Over Sharon
— -- Congratulations, Sharon, you seem to be doing what is necessary to save for retirement and educate your children. It's not often that we come across folks who want to do more beyond the retirement and education goals.
After doing an excellent job of saving for retirement and funding the children's college education through monthly cash flow, Sharon is ready to take her investments to a new level. However, she does not know whether to invest in individual stocks or mutual funds.
To solve her dilemma, it's useful to start with an understanding of risk, specifically the risks associated with investing.
Risky Business
Total investment risk can be divided into two parts — systematic risk and unsystematic risk. Let's look at each in turn:
Systematic risk is sometimes known as market risk.
Diversify, Diversify, Diversify
Unsystematic risk is associated with an individual business and represents that portion of the investment risk that can be reduced through diversification. It is unique to a company, industry or property. It has three components:
Business risk, which is associated with the enterprise itself.
Financial risk, associated with the mix of debt and equity used to finance the enterprise.
Exchange rate risk, associated with loss of principal due to the volatility of foreign currency values for companies doing business overseas.
In defining unsystematic risk, the emphasis is on diversification. Diversification among industries and industry sectors is the tool used to minimize such risk.
To properly diversify a portfolio among the various industry groups and sectors would require Sharon or anyone else to purchase at least 30 individual stocks, more realistically shares in 50 or more companies. For investors with less than a $1 million portfolio this can be expensive and very time consuming.
Most people have neither the time nor the skills to properly research and track 50 stocks. You can see from this logic that I'm suggesting that Sharon use mutual funds to build her portfolio.
Spread the Wealth
A well-run and highly diversified mutual fund will provide her with the ability to control the unsystematic risk in her portfolio. Additionally, the mutual fund's analysts will research and monitor stock selections for her.
Sharon can minimize systematic risk via careful asset allocation. This works because the classes of assets — stocks, bonds and cash — do not usually move in the same direction in unison.
For example, while the last 12 months was a weak period for stocks, bonds and cash (money market funds) did very well. So a portfolio that was comprised of 50 percent stocks, 45 percent bonds and 5 percent cash would have held up very well during the recent stock market correction.
If the stock portion of our hypothetical portfolio was invested in a well-diversified mutual fund or in several funds, it likely would held up even better than the investments of someone positioned heavily in technology and telecom stocks with the stock portion of his portfolio.
The most efficient way for Sharon to start her portfolio is to use mutual funds. They will save her time and money, and help mitigate some of the unsystematic risk in her portfolio.
Here are some mutual funds worth consideration.
U.S. Equity Funds
TIAA-CREF Growth & Income Fund
Oakmark Fund
Excelsior Value & Restructuring Fund
Artisan Mid-Cap Fund
Thornburg Value Fund
International Funds
UMB Scout WorldWide Fund
Artisan International Fund
Tweedy Browne Global Value
Bond Funds
Strong Short-Term Bond Fund
Harbor Bond Fund
Guest columnist Ronald W. Rogé, MS, CFP, is president of the fee-only Wealth Management firm R. W. Rogé & Co. in Bohemia, N.Y. Worth Magazine named him one of America's Best Financial Advisors and Medical Economics says he is one of the Best Financial Advisors for doctors. On the Web: http://www.rwroge.com.
Most people have neither the time nor the skills to properly research and track 50 stocks. You can see from this logic that I'm suggesting that Sharon use mutual funds to build her portfolio.
Spread the Wealth
A well-run and highly diversified mutual fund will provide her with the ability to control the unsystematic risk in her portfolio. Additionally, the mutual fund's analysts will research and monitor stock selections for her.
Sharon can minimize systematic risk via careful asset allocation. This works because the classes of assets — stocks, bonds and cash — do not usually move in the same direction in unison.
For example, while the last 12 months was a weak period for stocks, bonds and cash (money market funds) did very well. So a portfolio that was comprised of 50 percent stocks, 45 percent bonds and 5 percent cash would have held up very well during the recent stock market correction.
If the stock portion of our hypothetical portfolio was invested in a well-diversified mutual fund or in several funds, it likely would held up even better than the investments of someone positioned heavily in technology and telecom stocks with the stock portion of his portfolio.
The most efficient way for Sharon to start her portfolio is to use mutual funds. They will save her time and money, and help mitigate some of the unsystematic risk in her portfolio.
Here are some mutual funds worth consideration.
U.S. Equity Funds
TIAA-CREF Growth & Income Fund
Oakmark Fund
Excelsior Value & Restructuring Fund
Artisan Mid-Cap Fund
Thornburg Value Fund
International Funds
UMB Scout WorldWide Fund
Artisan International Fund
Tweedy Browne Global Value
Bond Funds
Strong Short-Term Bond Fund
Harbor Bond Fund
Guest columnist Ronald W. Rogé, MS, CFP, is president of the fee-only Wealth Management firm R. W. Rogé & Co. in Bohemia, N.Y. Worth Magazine named him one of America's Best Financial Advisors and Medical Economics says he is one of the Best Financial Advisors for doctors. On the Web: http://www.rwroge.com.
If the stock portion of our hypothetical portfolio was invested in a well-diversified mutual fund or in several funds, it likely would held up even better than the investments of someone positioned heavily in technology and telecom stocks with the stock portion of his portfolio.
The most efficient way for Sharon to start her portfolio is to use mutual funds. They will save her time and money, and help mitigate some of the unsystematic risk in her portfolio.
Here are some mutual funds worth consideration.
U.S. Equity Funds
TIAA-CREF Growth & Income Fund
Oakmark Fund
Excelsior Value & Restructuring Fund
Artisan Mid-Cap Fund
Thornburg Value Fund
International Funds
UMB Scout WorldWide Fund
Artisan International Fund
Tweedy Browne Global Value
Bond Funds
Strong Short-Term Bond Fund
Harbor Bond Fund
Guest columnist Ronald W. Rogé, MS, CFP, is president of the fee-only Wealth Management firm R. W. Rogé & Co. in Bohemia, N.Y. Worth Magazine named him one of America's Best Financial Advisors and Medical Economics says he is one of the Best Financial Advisors for doctors. On the Web: http://www.rwroge.com.
Guest columnist Ronald W. Rogé, MS, CFP, is president of the fee-only Wealth Management firm R. W. Rogé & Co. in Bohemia, N.Y. Worth Magazine named him one of America's Best Financial Advisors and Medical Economics says he is one of the Best Financial Advisors for doctors. On the Web: http://www.rwroge.com.