Thank you to all of our followers this year. We are lucky as the market has been very forgiving and generous to long investors. This article from the Journal talks about just how successful “boring investors” were. It’s a good New Year’s resolution though not to confuse smarts with luck. How many of us were 100% invested in stocks at the beginning of the year? Most sophisticated investors probably started the year with a traditional blend of 60% equity 40% bonds or some mixture of cash in their portfolios. Bonds had their worst year in 20 yrs. Cash returned zero. That does drag down the overall averages a bit for the real “boring investor”. So I’m grateful for what the market giveth and whether its luck or smarts, we’ll take it. Happy New Year All.
By TOMI KILGORE and TOM LAURICELLA CONNECT
Dec. 30, 2013 8:17 p.m. ET
In the best year for U.S. stocks since 1995, the smart way to play the markets has been to follow the dumb money.
So-called dumb-money strategies, which involve buying and holding a plain-vanilla portfolio of U.S. stocks, did much better than the more complex approaches employed by hedge funds and other professional investors.