This Guy Beats the Stock Market Every Year

"Steve... you're an investment advisor... I need to do something with my retirement money, but I don't like to follow investments at all... What do I do?"

I've been in the investment business as a hedge-fund manager, a mutual-fund manager, a stock broker, and a pure researcher for 13 years... so I've been asked this question several hundred times.

For most of those years, I didn't have a great answer. You can give your money to a financial planner, but it's hard to find a good one. You could invest in mutual funds, but they typically charge big fees for mediocre performance. My newsletter True Wealth is pretty easy to follow... but I've got a new pick for you to think about every month.

So there just hasn't been a great recommendation I could make for someone who wants to manage his own investments with minimal time and effort.

My friend Alex Green changed this situation for me recently... I can finally say, "Do this, and you'll be just fine."

Alex is a good friend of mine. He's one of the smartest guys I know... and he's quietly beaten the markets every year this decade. More amazingly, his portfolio has less risk than the stock market. Best of all, it only took him 20 minutes a year to do it.

Alex has the humility to know he can't predict the future. For most smart people, this is difficult – they try to tell the market what it should do.

Years ago, Alex devised what he calls the Gone Fishin' portfolio. It's based on the premise that you can't know which asset – stocks, bonds, real estate, etc. – will perform best in the next year, so it's only reasonable to spread your chips around. Since you're not trying to guess which asset will go up or down in a particular year, it literally takes you about 20 minutes to check up on things.

The returns speak for themselves... The Gone Fishin' portfolio has beaten the stock market every year this decade:

Alex has used this strategy since taking over as head of the Oxford Club in 2000. The simple idea here is, you own a specific mix of either no-load funds or exchange-traded funds. You sprinkle a bit everywhere... In U.S. stocks, high-yield bonds, REITs, precious metals, foreign stocks, small-cap stocks, and so on. On January 1 each year, you take 20 minutes and rebalance to get your percentages back in line again. As the table above shows, it's worked.

(That's the simple set-it-and-forget it, Gone Fishin' portfolio. If you prefer to be a more active investor, Alex's specific recommendations have performed as well as anyone's... The December edition of the independent Hulbert Financial Digest ranked Alex's recommendations fifth out of all the newsletters it tracks, in terms of risk-adjusted performance over the last five years. Hulbert tracks a few hundred newsletters.)

Alex and I have been friends for 15 years. I know him well. I can tell you, he's as smart an investor as you'll ever find.

If you have friends who are not so interested in their investments, or are totally new to investing, you ought to point them in the direction of Alex's upcoming book The Gone Fishin' Portfolio: Get Wise, Get Wealthy... and Get on With Your Life.

The investment section in your local bookstore is generally filled with absolute garbage for new investors... Books for newbies are usually written by professional writers, not brilliant investors. Alex's book is rare... in that it's a simple strategy that actually works, written in plain language, by a brilliant investor.

For some investors, I can't think of any better start than Alex Green and his new book. This strategy ensures that, by sprinkling your money around in many different assets, you'll never miss the next big winner... and you won't take a big hit from any one dud.

If you've ever asked the "How do I invest on autopilot?" question before, you should check it out.

Good investing,

Steve