Investment Help

If you are seeking investment help, look at the video here on my services. If you are seeking a different approach to managing your assets, you have landed at the right spot. I am a fee-only advisor registered in the State of Maryland, charge less than half the going rate for investment management, and seek to teach individuals how to manage their own assets using low-cost indexed exchange traded funds. Please call or email me if interested in further details. My website is at http://www.rwinvestmentstrategies.com. If you are new to investing, take a look at the "DIY Investor Newbie" posts here by typing "newbie" in the search box above to the left. These take you through the basics of what you need to know in getting started on doing your own investing.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Picking an Asset Allocation Model

Yesterday's post discussed Step One - Pick an Asset Allocation Model. Many brokers have similar models to choose from. Here are 2 of the 6 models offered by Schwab:

CLICK TO ENLARGE
(Source: Schwab)

Again, the main point is to look at the broad allocation between stocks and bonds. If you are in a position to take on risk because you have the capability, capacity, and need then, other things equal, you would choose a higher stock allocation. As is typical, Schwab has an online questionnaire to help select the appropriate model. There are also many tools online to kelp in this endeavor.

Note that Schwab has 6 asset classes and their targeted percentages.

Keep in mind that the objective is to choose a model that you can pretty much stick to over an up or down cycle. Don't just look at the best year's performance--look hard also at the worst year return. It is highly likely that you will experience such a return sometime within the next 10 years.

Picking the appropriate model is a big step in the DIY investing process. Tomorrow, we go to Step 2 for the DIY investor: selecting specific investments to fit the model.

2 comments:

  1. I've used almost all the major online brokers but not Schwab and I know you blog about Schwab quite frequently. I must admit, I'm quite impressed with their tools from what I see from your posts!

    Very well presented and easy to grasp.

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  2. Good post! Thanks for sharing this information I appreciate it. God bless!

    asset management ma

    ReplyDelete