Bonnie, you and I have been discussing brokerages for quite some time. I'd forgotten about that.
As to your aversion to the Big Boyz. No problem as a basic kind of FA guy, I also know where the value is. I also recognize that my well-chosen small value stocks have killed me in the past.
IMHO, the influence of mutual funds in general is greatly exagerated (probably by the funds). Mutual funds only own about 10% of the equities. I've come to believe that they are not the real movers and shakers in this market.
One I first got into this about 4 years ago, I big-time examined mutual funds. One of things I did was to examine mutual fund performance in 34 categories over 1, 3, 5, 10, and 15 years. I developed what I called a success ratio (should have called it a failure ratio). The point here being, that when I compared REIT's to the S&P 500 Index, I got a success ratio of almost zero. BTW, same with utilities.
So, I moved them to the fixed income category. There they score very favorably against the benchmark.
More musing from the swamp. As always, BWDIK.
Berney |
