Comments on: Lazy Portfolios Beat the S&P – but Claims are Bogus and Deceiving

By: Chrisfs

Chrisfs — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:23:01 +0000

A different problem Paul Farrell has is that of general credibility.
When he’s not pushing his lazy portfolios he’s making doomsday predictions of the stock market and all of Society in general.
For example, despite the title of this post
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-to-invest-for-the-debt-bomb-explosion-2010-02-09
There is no investment advice , it’s simply fearful statement on how unless you are among the richest, you are doomed to 3rd World style anarchy.
An actual quote “Are you prepared? Or preparing? Will your family survive in a post-apocalyptic world, when anarchy is rampant in America?”
He quote someone as saying”Make tons of money. Buy an isolated farm in the mountains. Protect family against the barbarians: “Your safe haven must be self-sufficient and capable of growing some kind of food … It should be well-stocked with seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc. Think Swiss Family Robinson.” ” and then asks people to “Imagine a scene like Port-au-Prince after the quake”

So I’m supposed to take this guy’s stock picks ???? There is a flood of info on the Internet, one must pick and choose or spend 24 hrs/day reading advice. His column is one I will happily skip. I don’t know why Marketwatch even keeps him around. Actually I do know, alarmist columns drive traffic to the station. Some people love being alarmed. But it doesn’t make for good investment advice or even serious discussions.

This is a guy that’s interested in creating hype, not giving fact based advice.

By: Robbie Bainer

Robbie Bainer — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 22:21:19 +0000

These days, there is danger is mindless buy and hold strategies, but I think the lazy portfolios offer investors a place to get started. They encourage diversification, which is essential, and, especially if implemented with comparable ETFs, allow trading in and out and stop losses to keep you in the game even during sudden market upheavals. So, not the final word on investing, but a place for the person who cannot or will not want to spend more time studying individual stocks or bet the farm again on a broker who loses more for them than they can themselves. The key issue here is setting up some stop losses for really bad drops, which is possible with ETFs in the mix.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:55:36 +0000

Hi,

I do not think there are thousands of Lazy Portfolio’s to cherry pick from.

At first, I scoffed at the idea of comparing the Lazy Porfolio’s to the S&P 500. Why the S&P 500? This makes no sense, and the S&P 500 will most likely always lose out to a well diversified portfolio. As I started to read more into this subject, the key point is this: you can get S&P 500 like returns from a well diversifed 60% stock and 40% bond mix. You can get the S&P 500 like returns with less volatility. That is the key point. (However, I think one can argue going forward, the REIT markets and US Treasury markets are not going to provide anywhere near their historical returns.)

By: Jon

Jon — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 21:43:40 +0000

I apologize if you feel I haven’t shown you respect. I do disagree with you, I believe you’re giving short shrift to a concept that’s actually a great thing for most small investors, and I believe you have a bias, as most of us do, but I think I’ve stated these beliefs respectfully. You’re not the one who ended up with an insulting graphic icon in this exchange.

I don’t think you’re up to any sort of evil deed with lazy portfolios. In fact, I doubt you’ve thought about them much one way or the other. You do seem to be part of the Wall St. culture, though, right? I doubt the Wall St. graphic assigned to your posts was randomly chosen. And you seem to view and run your site as a business. That’s great. There’s nothing wrong with that. But you do seem, in essence, to be selling your financial and investments insights and advice. You generate content here, people like me read what you’ve written, and the traffic helps you sell ads.

By: Darwin

Darwin — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:58:54 +0000

Jon,
I don’t have a newsletter, so I’m not sure what you’re referring to. I derive no financial benefit from some sort of “bait and switch” from lazy portfolios or whatever you may think my motive is. I had just read the MW article for like the 4th time in a year and decided to investigate it further and write a post about it. That simple.
On the Avatar,
It’s some random Avatar program that I chose since it was a little different than the default blue screen for everyone that didn’t already have an image. If you look elsewhere on the blog, you’ll see various faces.

“Bother to post?” – I “bothered to reply” to several comments and concerns on this chain, including yours, so how ’bout a little respect? It’s OK to have a difference of opinion. This is what makes web 2.0 so great!

I hope you’ll check out some other content on the site and I’m sure you’ll find some stuff that you enjoy.

By: Jon

Jon — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 04:56:41 +0000

Ha. Funny. I just noticed the anxious little frowny-faced graphic that appears with my posts. I certainly didn’t choose it. Is that the default graphic your site assigns to people who bother to post?

By: Jon

Jon — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 04:49:31 +0000

True, true, these lazy portfolios aren’t for everybody. To refer back to one example you gave, I certainly wouldn’t recommend that anybody close to retirement put a large chunk of their money in a lazy portfolio, but that’s because I hold that they shouldn’t have a large chunk of their money in equities.

I also agree that lazy portfolios aren’t a panacea. Neither are managed funds or financial managers or financial advisors or newsletters. Investing in equities is risky — especially for people who do not have the time, interest, knowledge, and/or means to rigorously and frequently research the companies they invest in, which I’d guess accounts for about 99 percent of small investors.

For these investors, I’m very comfortable in my belief that if they want to participate in the considerable gains that equities can generate while also mitigating risk somewhat, a well diversified collection of indexed funds is a great solution. Say what you will, they have stood the test of time so far, and I believe they will continue to do so. And people can save the money they might otherwise spend on financial advisors, mutual fund fees, newsletters, etc.

I have to ask: How did your newsletter perform over the past two years and over the past five? I genuinely don’t know the answer. Did you beat the S&P? Did you do better than 3 percent? If so, congratulations.