SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — “America’s investors have been ripped off as massively as a bank being held up by a guy with a gun and a mask,”? former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt warned in an article in Fortune magazine a decade ago. That same year in his classic “Take On The Street,”? Levitt lambasted the fund industry as “a culture that thrives on hype … withholds important information,”? a “cutthroat business”? that “misleads investors.”? Today, it’s worse.
Lazy Portfolios were born as a defensive move against this relentless war by guys with “masks and guns … ripping off”? America’s 95 million Main Street investors. And the strategies of men like Levitt, Vanguard’s Jack Bogle, Nobel Economist Daniel Kahneman, Warren Buffett, Yale’s Robert Shiller and other industry giants were the inspiration.
Speaking of reducing trading costs, I just set up my ING Direct Sharebuilder Premium Account a few weeks ago. For a $12 monthly fee, you get 12 free "auto-trades." Basically, you can set your account up so that it automatically buys any combination/ratio of 12 stocks, whenever the required funds are present as cash in the account. The best part is that you can change the allocation and required funds amount, at any time.
Right now, I've got it set to auto-invest in the basic PP ETFs, and also some is allocated to the 2xPP using the leveraged ETFs discussed over on the other thread. I could also have it diversify my gold portion amongst different gold ETFs, or any number of other plans... so long as there aren't more than 12 trades. I thought it was a good way to thumb my nose up at the Wall Street Machine in two ways (lazy portfolio and ridiculously low per-trade fees).
