Your Single Most Important Investment Decision

Fannie Mae was taken over! Stocks are soaring!

But what will happen tomorrow? Is it time to buy... or sell?

This is what most investors are thinking about. But that kind of thinking doesn't get you rich...

Want to get rich from your investments? Six factors affect the long-term value of your investment portfolio, according to my good friend and fellow newsletter writer Alex Green. That's all.

Let's take a look at these six factors... Then we'll whittle them down to the most important of the six: your single most important investment decision.

The six factors that determine the long-run value of your investment portfolio are:

Only one of the six is out of your control. Surprisingly, it's what most people concentrate on: your investment returns.

You control how much and how long you save. You also control your mix of investments. You control how much you pay in expenses on your investments (you can now choose low-expense exchange-traded funds instead of mutual funds, for example).

You also can control your tax hit... using retirement accounts or using tax-advantaged index funds in your taxable accounts.

In his new book, The Gone Fishin' Portfolio, Alex writes, "Of these five factors we can control, the most important is your asset allocation. It's your single most important investment decision."

According to Alex, asset allocation (your mix of stocks, bonds, commodities, etc.) accounts for 90% of the total return of a diversified investment portfolio over the long term.

That's not just Alex's opinion – it's the opinion of the Financial Analysts Journal, based on two sophisticated studies of the long-term performance of pension funds. The studies found that which stock or bond you pick isn't so important... What matters over the long run is how you mix your assets among stocks, bonds, and commodities.

In his book, Alex shows you the 10 investments you should make to spread your money around... and how to readjust your portfolio once a year. It's simple. Anyone can do it.

Since 2003, Alex's simple strategy has returned 17.3% a year compounded, beating the market every year. This is no accident... While it may not beat the market every single year going forward, this strategy will work over the long run – for decades to come.

Until this book came around, I didn't have a good recommendation for people getting into investing. But now I do. I know they need to read this book first, before they do anything else. Even for investment professionals, it's a great reminder of what's important, what works in investing.

As Alex argues, what works is focusing on your asset allocation. So instead of spending all your time worrying about whether it's time to buy or sell, spend some time on what matters... Spend time tweaking your asset allocation to the proper mix.

If you make the time, you'll avoid ending up like folks who had a ton of their retirement savings in a losing stock like Enron... or a losing asset class, like real estate over the last two years. You avoid huge risks.

Remember, that's your single most important investment decision over the long run. 

Good investing,

Steve