An Introduction

Hi. Welcome to BourGroup and my blog. Phil

Phil Bour is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER(tm) professional since 2004, a Magna Cum Laude college graduate and an accounting professional for over 35+ years. I love numbers, statistics and economic history.

I am also an Enrolled Agent (EA) to represent taxpayers before the Internal Revenue Service and to prepare tax returns.

"Phil"osophy: I believe that you can manage your money on your own (not necessarily through individual stock selection but through mutual funds, ETF's and other solutions) once you receive some one-time, professional guidance. Why pay annual fees when there may be little added value? For additional information, first read the "An Introduction" label at the left. Then move on to others.

Sunday, November 4, 2007

Ric Edelman's Asset Allocation System

In Ric Edelman's new book, "The Lies About Money", he introduces a GPS - Guide to Portfolio Selection which is kind of neat.

Check it out: https://www.advisorlynx.com/secure/edelman/

You do not have to provide a name and address but only a zip code and an e-mail address and it is free. It is interesting but read and understand fully his required disclaimers.

I will write more about this in my book review, but some of the pie chart slices for what appear to be efforts at diversification have correlations of .90 or higher with other items in the asset category (meaning that the elements of the strategy move pretty much in lock step with each other). For example, intermediate government and corporate bond holdings are highly correlated so maybe there is a slight return difference but basically both categories are going up and down together. My opinion: "So what is the point? If you need fixed income, then choose one or two bond categories and be done with it."

Just a thought.