What's your retirement portfolio mix?

[HiImSeth]

Re: What's your retirement portfolio mix?

Speaking of not being diversified enough.. you'll like mine.. (sarcasm)

86.65 - NBGEX
8.79 - Company Stock (financial institution)
3.64 - VIMAX
0.92 - Intermediate Bond

Total - $16,649

It needs a lot of work.. I started out with 80% of my contribution going to NBGEX cause I liked it and it was doing well and I didn't care much. That was a few years ago when I was about 20 or so and had just started. I'm 25 now and I've decided to take a better approach to it and try to figure out the right allocation.

I've recently began routing more of my contributions towards the 'AP Intermediate Bond' to get that up to around 5%. Not really sure what else to work on next though..

With the options listed below, what type of changes would you guys suggest?

AP Cash Management 		 	N/A
SEI Stable Asset        	              N/A
AP Intermediate Bond 		 	APFBX
TR Price New Horizons 			PRNHX
Dodge & Cox Stock 		         DODGX
Vanguard Inst'l Index 		          VINIX
N & B Genesis Trust 			  NBGEX
MAP Conservative Fund 			 N/A
MAP Balanced Fund 			   N/A
MAP Moderate Growth Fund 	     N/A
MAP Growth Fund 			    N/A
MAP Aggressive Growth Fund 	     N/A
International Strat Allocation	          N/A
Hotchkis & Wiley MidCap Val A 	    HWMAX
Vanguard Mid Cap Index Adm 	   VIMAX
Growth Fund of America (R5) 	      RGAFX
American Balanced A 			   ABALX

Sorry, I had a hard time getting the tickers to line up correctly.

[jIM_Ohio]

Re: What's your retirement portfolio mix?

With the options listed below, what type of changes would you guys suggest?

AP Cash Management 	N/A
SEI Stable Asset        	N/A
AP Intermediate Bond 	APFBX
TR Price New Horizons 	PRNHX
Dodge & Cox Stock 		DODGX
Vanguard Inst'l Index 	VINIX
N & B Genesis Trust 	NBGEX

MAP Conservative Fund 	N/A
MAP Balanced Fund 		N/A
MAP Moderate Growth Fund 	N/A
MAP Growth Fund 		N/A
MAP Aggressive Growth Fund 	N/A
International Strat Allocation	N/A
Hotchkis & Wiley MidCap Val A HWMAX
Vanguard Mid Cap Index Adm 	VIMAX
Growth Fund of America (R5) 	RGAFX
American Balanced A 	ABALX

Sorry, I had a hard time getting the tickers to line up correctly.

I own PRNHX ( T Rowe New Horizons). It is a well diversified small cap offering. I recomend it.

My wife owns RGAFX. Make sure it's "no load". This is one of largest funds in US... it is large cap growth and could be considered.

Dodge and Cox stock is a MUCH BETTER large cap offering. This is one of best funds out there. If it were available to me, I might consider this for 100% of the 401k...

Age 25, I'd go 100% stock... following my 45-15-15-15-10 allocation, the closest I'd get is:

45% DODGX
15% HWMAX (verify the sales charge is waived in 401k)
15% PRNHX
25% International Strat Allocation

If the sales charge is not waived, I'd throw 30% into PRNHX.

Do you have an IRA?

[HiImSeth]

Re: What's your retirement portfolio mix?

No IRA yet. My wife and I are looking into getting Roths pretty soon though.. probably w/ T Rowe Price due to the $50/month thing we can start out with.

Thanks for the info man. I'll have to do some looking, I doubt I want to get out of NGBEX though for now.. mainly because it has done so well for me. But going forward I could aim for those funds and allocations you mentioned above and leave what I have in NBGEX there for now..

[jIM_Ohio]

Re: What's your retirement portfolio mix?

Here's a few comments. PRNHX is a closet mid cap fund. It is one of largest small cap funds out there... and morning star style boxes have occasionally put this as a mid cap fund (based on holdings). I hold several small cap funds (in small doses)... so I could see logic to using two small cap funds in many cases. I even own two small cap funds in my 401k (VEXPX and RTYFX) plus PRNHX in my Roth. My wife has a 4th small cap fund. Small caps are a place where many companies exist and many good ideas exist... and it's not possible for one mutual fund to do this category justice, IMO.

Second issue is PRNHX may close soon... it has closed twice before (and reopened both times). Not an issue with 401k, but a consideration for your Roth.

I like T Rowe Price. Excellent customer service, wide range of fund offerings (one fund in each style box, minimum). Low fees. Low minimums.

T Rowe charges a $10 fee for IRA's under $5000 (per fund). If total assetts for you are more than 10k, the $10 per fund fee is waived (they don't tell you that unless you ask). I think if you have 100k in assetts they give you Morningstar premium subscription for free. I'm not there yet (100k), so I'll let you know when I get there, LOL.

[HiImSeth]

Re: What's your retirement portfolio mix?

Great, thanks again for all the info. That helps understand a lot. So when you look up a fund on yahoo or something, it doesn't usually come right out and say "Small Cap", some may say Small Blend is that equivelent to Small Cap blend? Same thing for those that they list as Medium Growth or Medium Blend = Medium Cap Growth or Medium Cap Blend.. right?

Thanks!

[jIM_Ohio]

Re: What's your retirement portfolio mix?

My mutual fund knowledge comes from several sources.

1) research. I have done lots of surfing at Vanguard and T Rowe Price web sites in particular.
2) discussion groups.

http://groups.google.com/group/misc.invest.mutual-funds/

http://www.fundalarm.com/wwwboard/wwwboard.html

and places like this.
3) when others ask questions I look up the funds. For example I learned of another good small and mid cap fund from your post.

There are 3 sizes of companies (small medium and large). There could be a 4th size called "micro" as well. Morningstar does not recognize micro as a size.

Each size has 3 possibilities. Growth, Value or Blend. Blend is a combination of growth and value.

A company called morningstar independantly rates the mutual funds. It has a 9 square box (to identify mid cap blend, large cap value or small cap growth for example). Monringstar.com if interested.

Morningstar also applies "star" ratings. I use this to eliminate bad funds. The 5 star system (*****) goes to top 20% of funds, 4 star **** goes to next 20%, and so on (** and * represent bottom 40% of funds based on risk adjusted performance).

When I look a fund up on yahoo I look for:

1) it's profile, what does fund it SAY it does
2) Morning star style boxes (does fund act like it says it acts?)
3) performance (looking for consistent returns over 5 year and 10 year period. 8% gets my attention. I'd rather have 8% +/- 2% than the hot fund which gets 25% one year and is down 12% 18 months later.

But I do own some funds (liek PRNHX) which does get 25% on occasion and does lose money on occasion. That is acceptable for small cap growth, for a small amount of my portfolio.

If you look at my core funds (PRWCX and PRFDX) those two rarely have a down year and that is why they are my core holdings. I hold a much larger percentage of these than others.

PRWCX is an example of a fund which said it would do one thing (mid caps) and when it grew it became a large cap fund. It still holds many mid caps, but some of it's picks have grown big enough to be large caps.

large cap is usually any company which has more than $5 B in outstanding stock ($5 B market cap)
mid cap is usually any company which has between $2B and $5 B in outstanding stock
small cap is usually any company which has a market cap of less than $2B.

There is evidence of a micro cap category (less than $750 M?).

The goal is choosing a mix of large, medium and small, growth and value (blended?) offerings which suit how much risk you want to take.

Your investments (as listed) were close to 95% mid and small cap. High risk for sure. You do well when market goes up... you are not old enough to know what happens when a bubble pops... or whether you know if you handle the ride down.

I am older than you and prefer the stability of large caps. Large cap value in particular and given the best risk adjusted returns of any of the categories (hence my preference for PRFDX and PRWCX).

My roller coaster ride has bumps, I will probably not go as high, but I should also not go nearly as low. Based on history at least. Past performance is no guarantee of anything in the past or future...

[humandraydel]

Re: What's your retirement portfolio mix?

No real estate, no commodities.

Well, I know I stand no chance of changing your mind - I've mentioned this before - but I'm going to say this again:

There are many "corporations" that make money from commodities and real estate. While it's true that they are not "pure" commodity plays, they very much make more money when the price of their commodity goes up.

My point is simply that you keep saying people don't have any exposure to real estate or commodities but they do.