Posted
almost 17 years
ago
Afternoon of July 12, 2007, Stonehenge, Wiltshire, England
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Posted
almost 17 years
ago
Evening of July 9, 2007, City of Westminster, London
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Posted
almost 17 years
ago
The high availability and quality of
ETFs
provides a strong foundation for a cost-effective retirement strategy. Of
course, Wall Street (at
least one half of it) hates ETFs, which are cheap and don't allow brokers to
extract generous commissions.
... [More]
Worse, a good ETF-based strategy can outperform a
more managed approach. Cheaper and better, just like
Linux!
Given the decision to setup a lazy portfolio, you need to decide on an
allocation strategy.
There are many long-term trends that I believe are likely to continue; ETFs
allow their monetization and integration into your investment portfolio. For
example, I've never been a fan of individual stocks as an investment asset (I
am making a distinction here between trading and longer-term
investing). Over time, the individual investor will
not—cannot— generate the same level of return that a mutual fund
will garner. Moreover, in the long run, mutual funds have a hard time beating
their
benchmark indexes—even
they cannot beat the street. So I would not want a long-term investment
strategy built around my own stock selection, or even mutual funds. But I
would want an ETF or two that tracks a broad swath of the US market. Such a
move might sound pedestrian, but it beats having a dog like
Magellan stink up your
retirement.
Another trend that I suspect is only going to accelerate is the decline of
the
dollar and the growth of
emerging markets.
The easiest way to realize the former is a fund that invests in mid- and
large-cap offerings in
Europe,
Asia, and
Australia. Such a fund
bets on continued growth in those markets, but what they also back is the
health of those currencies versus the dollar. To bet on emerging
markets—veritable money trees, like investing in
pre-Industrial Revolution
America—there are plenty of focused ETFs. Due to
information asymmetry,
illiquidity, and
corruption, there is actually a good argument for going with a managed fund for
your emerging market allocation, but there are some smart yet low-fee ETFs,
too.
Just the sort of moron from which you want to take investment advice
A third asset class I would want in my long-term portfolio is
real estate.
REITs
have had an interesting ride lately, but I feel that they still have a place in
any serious retirement plan. There are a handful of ETFs that track
REIT indexes.
Thus, for the aggressive and long-term investor, consider my "bet the
farm on overseas" portfolio allocation:
35% Vanguard Total Stock Market
(VTI)
or iShares S&P 500 Index ETF
(IVV)
25% iShares MSCI EAFE Index ETF
(EFA)
20% iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index ETF
(EEM)
10% iShares Dow Jones US Real Estate
(IYR) or
iShares Cohen & Steers Realty Majors ETF
(ICF)
10% iShares Russell 2000 Value Index ETF
(IWN)
This portfolio allocation is bound to shower you in gold. Or it might result
in a complete loss of value. And your wife will leave you. Alone and a diet of
cat food: You have been warned.
Reinvest
all dividends
and
rebalance annually.
Oh, and the smart investor—unless immortal—eschews
annuities
as if they were a
Michael Bay film. [Less]
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Posted
almost 17 years
ago
London was fab; now in
beautiful
Birmingham.
For those attending lovely
GUADEC, an apposite reminder: My
keynote is Thursday morning, 09:30.
And do not miss Joey's torrid
meta-metadata chat, which is under way as we speak.
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Posted
almost 17 years
ago
Google is a strange and wonderful
place. I highly recommend it.
The Admiral for Memorial Day
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Posted
almost 17 years
ago
I am jubilant to announce that I have accepted an offer of employment
from Google, a
public corporation
specializing in search, advertising, and unabated innovation.
Joining the staff of the
Open Source Program Office,
purveyors of such wonderful
... [More]
offerings as the
Summer of Code, I shall remain in
Boston.
I will leverage a few weeks of anything-but-relaxing
unemployment to finish my
latest book,
move across the river,
and advise political campaigns, then I will hit the ground running. [Less]
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Posted
almost 17 years
ago
This marks my 261st blog entry as a
Novell employee. It shall also mark my
last.
An operose decision, I resigned as Chief Architect of our Linux Desktop
endeavor, effective today.
In the house that Ximian built, we dreamt and
saw to fruition the
... [More]
world's finest Linux desktop, Linux's first desktop commercial success. Seated at the table aside some of
the industry's sharpest hackers, we
challenged ourselves not with the goal of building another Linux desktop, but
with the aim of engineering a more perfect desktop—Linux or otherwise.
Unsatisfied with simply cheaper, we went for broke:
better and faster,
too. SLED's éclat
is ours.
Leaving is never easy. But here and now the timing is right and so, after
three and a half years, here's to what's next.
My work email won't forward, so hit me
@rlove.org. [Less]
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Posted
almost 17 years
ago
A month or so ago, I moved the bulk of my
rlove.org services to
Google Apps Premiere.
Joey, as he is wont to do, soon followed.
With confidence in your equal satisfaction, I highly recommend it.
Jon Stokes in Ars Technica on the
new instructions and
... [More]
performance characteristics of Intel's Penryn core. Also, Anand's—I know, I know—take on the same.
Peter informed me that
TurboTax is
not quite so turbo. Thankfully, I filed
last week.
And in other signs that the end of the world is neigh:
The BlackBerry network breaks.
Ingo Molnar releases
a completely new, and fair, process
scheduler. A fair scheduling class is ideal for desktop workloads. Check
out the patch.
David Leondardt in today's
New York Times on the
economic advisers advising each presidential candidate.
John Stossel, in a
posting today in
Real Clear Politics, on
tax reform.
No surprise where John falls. His post mentions
H.R.25,
the FairTax, an excellent
implementation of a consumption tax with rebate. I suspect it will need a
deduction for mortgage payments, however.
Robert Robb in the
Arizona Republic:
Senator McCain shines on fiscal issues. [Less]
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Posted
almost 17 years
ago
One would think this is some sort of trick.
But it is so typical.
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Posted
almost 17 years
ago
"Reason Number Seven to Hate the Gators"
Off to Nuremberg,
wherein I shall attempt to locate a television at 0300 so that I may bear
witness to a repeat slaughter by the
University of Florida
of Joey.
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