Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 275

 

Here is an excerpt from a book I recently read, "A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Best Investment Advice for the New Century," by Burton Malkiel.

The most important investment decision you will probably ever make concerns the balancing of asset categories (stocks, bonds, real estate, money-market securities, and so on) at different stages of your life. According to Roger Ibbotson, who has spent a lifetime measuring returns from alternative portfolios, more than 90 percent of an investor’s total return is determined by the asset categories that are selected and their overall proportional representation. Less than 10 percent of investment success is determined by the specific stocks or mutual funds that an individual chooses.