Investment management is a critical part of the retirement planning puzzle for most people. Your investment portfolio doesn't exist in a vacuum, it exists in the context of your overall financial situation. Therefore, the selection of an overall investment strategy, the portfolio allocation, and the breadth of diversification all bear significantly on not just your investment outcome, but also on your retirement outcome.
Many firms rely on market prognostication and forecasting to structure portfolios, despite the conclusion of study after study that shows such an approach is not usually the optimal one. By contrast, the approach I advocate for portfolio managment is based on the conclusions of long-term studies from leading academic institutions and researchers. This approach focuses on what the evidence suggests really matters in long-term porfolio performance and is not based on speculation about what will happen next week, next month or next year. Because of this and because costs matter, the portfolios we construct rely mostly on low cost, well diversified, passively sturctured asset class portfolios as the underlying investment vehicles. This, I believe, results in lower cost, more consistently styled portfolios.
For a much more extensive discussion of the overall investment approach I use, click here. For a short summary of the core tenets to which I subscribe and which guide my investment recommendations, click here.