Investors: Don’t do dumb stuff when it gets hard

Try not to abandon your strategy as soon as it lags the alternatives.

Given the choice between a simple solution and a complex one, which would you choose? When it comes to investing, many people seem bent on making their portfolios needlessly complicated.

My blog—canadiancouchpotato.com—includes a model portfolio with just three exchange-traded funds (ETFs): one covering Canadian stocks, another for foreign stocks and a third for bonds. This trio of funds includes more than 3,000 companies from around the world, plus hundreds of bonds of all maturities. It’s super-cheap with a fee of less than 0.20%. And during the last 10- and 20-year periods it would have returned about 6% to 7%. Yet so many investors have an unshakable urge to tinker with it.

I routinely get emails that go something like this: “I like your Couch Potato portfolio, but I would like to make some changes. What do you think about adding some gold, small-cap stocks, commodities, real estate, global bonds, sector ETFs, infrastructure and maybe some blue-chip stocks to the mix?” I’m exaggerating, but only a little. Even those who admit they have no experience are convinced their tweaks will improve the portfolio.

Read the rest of this article from MoneySense Magazine on their website.