Asset Allocation Fund

  

Like oil and hate telecom? Asset allocate accordingly. Nervous about the stock market...just happy to have safe bonds, at least mostly? Asset allocate accordingly. Investing for a 30-year time horizon? Then you probably want growthy smaller company securities and no cash or bonds.

That's what asset allocation funds do. They're essentially a custom car you configure to drive you to retirement or to whatever your next set of financial goals are. There are 14,372,083 asset allocation funds in the world, so have fun shopping.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is fund diversification, a...39 Views

00:00

finance a la shmoop. what is fund diversification and why is it important?

00:08

well ever hear the phrase don't put all your eggs in one basket ? yeah if you do

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and there's a pothole, well, this can happen. had she put a few eggs here [woman drives car]

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than another few there and then another few there well breakfast might have been

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saved. well the same thing works for stocks. sorta ,put all your eggs and

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shares of the newly IPO to whatever dot-com and it could be a moonshot. [chart on screen]

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SpaceX IPOs at fifty bucks a share and soars to a thousand dollars a share, but

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well then the Martians kill the visitors and eat their brains and the spacecraft.

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oh well you were rich for at least an hour. that's something right most people [alien on flaming planet]

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don't want to live such a volatile life, especially when it comes to thinking

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about long-term investing and maybe even retirement. when your entire investment

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portfolio is in one stock it can be a wild ride and if you're not a

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professional investor it's likely that you'll get weak and sell at just the [woman types at computer]

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wrong time .so instead of having to worry about timing and picking just the right

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stock most investors buy a basket of stocks which are diverse. like two-thirds

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US stocks one-third non-us stocks. maybe twenty percent of your portfolio is

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invested in high-growth technology. ten percent is in transportation with a lot [pie chart shown]

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of dividend yield. and of course there's always the one percent riboflavin. I

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don't forget that. so yeah when you diversify and two or three of your

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stocks take a dive, well then not all of your eggs are ruined. there are just one

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or two rotten ones in the bunch while the rest are going to be used to cook [smiling man eats eggs]

01:47

one heck of an omelette.

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