cheesey mike

Money Magazine ETF Recommendations: Keeping It Simple May Be Stupid

As a new ETF investor (who has moved away from managed wrap accounts), I greatly appreciate these articles that talk about allocation strategies. I believe the CNNMoney portfolio is too simple though, and perhaps even Gary's Gorden's as well, but its a great starter portfolio and would have weathered the recent correctly well. I would consider adding intl real estate (though not right now) and emerging market debt. Also, I am not sure about VEU/DLS as a complete proxy for international equities. I have been using EFA/EEM/VWO/EEB but plan to move toward single country or regionals as I get more comfortable with self management. These tweaks start to cross the line from simple/lazy, but the bueaty of ETF's is one can pick their own level of involvement and complexity, or evolve there over time, and there is more low-cost diversification here than many "old-school" portfolios.