Tuesday 21 July 2009

How best to allocate your funds?

To a certain extent, that depends on your risk appetite, which in turn hinges on your individual circumstances.

A risk-averse investor may hold more cash, and a risk-tolerant investor vice-versa.

Allocation will also depend on market conditions.

Equity risk premium can be a good guiding principle for asset allocation decisions, i.e., when to hold cash and when to hold stocks if you are looking at just 2 asset classes.

Even if you have high tolerance for risks, it would be foolish to allocate 80% of your portfolio to equities during a stockmarket bubble.

And even, if the market was "normal" when you allocated your assets, prices will move, leaving you holding more of one asset class than you desire. In which case, you might want to rebalance your portfolio.

Stocks, bonds or cash? How much you hold of each asset class - or asset allocation - is the most important decision in an investment process. Studies have shown that about 95% of variations in returns on portfolios are explained by asset allocation decisions. Only about 5% are due to other causes, such as security selection.

Ref: Show Me the Money by Teh Hooi Ling

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