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Strategies & Market Trends : Ask Vendit Off-Topic Questions -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rrufff who wrote (3400)	1/3/2005 1:01:58 AM
From: Walkingshadow	Respond to of 8752

Hi rrufff, Yes, I do play ETFs. But some of my retirement accounts offer me an astoundingly broad array of choices (MFs only) that range from bad to really bad. I have gone round and round with employers over this. Essentially, there's a lot of corruption there in the form of sweet deals and kickbacks of various sorts (I am NOT saying these are necessarily illegal). They have made it very clear to me that they fully realize that 99% of employees are clueless about investments, are not interested, and put their money in "safe" investments such as "guaranteed" interest bearing funds (that are guaranteed only to lose value over time because they don't keep up with inflation). I know of several employers (including mine) that offer tax-sheltered vehicles such as annuities (that give pitiful returns because of the tax-sheltered status) WITHIN a tax sheltered vehicle!!! I kid you not. Worse, they seem to think that is not such a bad idea. I gave up even talking to them about these things. They started looking at me differently... I think maybe they notified Homeland Security that I might be a potential threat. <ggg> I think there's quite a good argument for investing in ETFs, and as you point out the minimal fees are one such excellent reason. But for long term stuff, I would never rely exclusively on ETFs. The only real reason for that is because I like to spread my long-term stuff out over the whole planet, and I have managed to find some 5 star MFs that give a decent risk/reward profile, and have a good long-term record. Maybe hope springs eternal, or maybe there's a sucker born every minute, I don't know which, but I like to cover the possibility that a few managed funds out there will significantly outperform the benchmark, even after expenses are taken into consideration. But I don't rely upon THEM, either... I have a mix of managed and unmanaged (ETFs) holdings. That's just my approach. I figure if I spread things out enough, I will hardly ever have to look at them, since no single position can really make much of a dent in me, and that suits me fine. So I only trade with a limited part of my overall holdings. T