I see advertisements and news articles galore on robo-advisors popping up everywhere I look. Don’t get me wrong, I find these services to be much more cost efficient than the traditional financial advisors. Companies like Edward Jones still charge excessive investment and administrative fees so that they can cover their expensive overhead. Brick and mortar investment advisories have rent, utilities, and employees that they need to pay, and after all of that they still want to turn a decent profit. You, as the investor, are paying for that overhead. We as a society need to understand that creating a diversified portfolio with a risk tolerance comparable to your years until retirement, and that nothing more, or less, is needed.
First and foremost, a general rule of thumb is to limit your bond investing to your age less 10 points. So if you are 30 years of age, you should be 20% invested in bonds. The remainder of your portfolio should fall into equities! Now I am not saying you need to invest 80% into Apple stock, rather, you should diversify amongst a basket of equities.
Low cost mutual and index funds are usually the way to invest. Notice I said “low cost”. Index funds cover a wide variety of industries and stocks, some domestic, some international, and hopefully some that pay a healthy dividend as well. You want a high performing fund that takes as little off the top as possible. I generally try and stay within 0.5% for fund fees. Remember, those advisors charge you a fee on top of fees these individual funds charged, so chances are these are fees that you are already incurring that you may not even be aware of.
If you are looking for other investment options to further diversify your portfolio there are many. Binary options investing can a reliable fixed return investment to add to your burgeoning portfolio. Consider that commodities are making a hot comeback as well. I know these types of investments are typically deemed to be stodgy and stale, but gold and silver are limited in quantity, and the limitation of a resource almost always makes it more valuable. We are even seeing silver rising in value at a faster rate than gold for the first time in a long awhile.