Mad Money Machine

by Paul Douglas Boyer

MMM-059: Crystal Ball

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Mad Money Machine show 59

The Mad Money Machine is proud to be sponsored by Index Funds Advisors at ifa.com. I’m going to help you go through each of the 12 Steps for Active Investors with snippets of the author Mark Hebner’s own podcast.

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Should Warren Buffet invest in the Vanguard 2010 Target Retirement Fund? Not if we interpret the five dimensions of Risk Capacity properly.

iTunes still isn’t updating my feed. Hmmmmmm….. Unsubscribe and Subscribe for now…

I’m thinking about changing the name of my show and also changing the feed. Will you come with me if I change it? What should I call the show? I need a domain name also. I kinda like “The Boring Investing Show” but “The Paul Douglas Boyer Show” lets me talk about a lot more than just investing. Call me.

Do you like popcorn with Tabasco Sauce, salt, and butter?


Bogle, Bogle, Bogle interviewed on podcasts.

As an investor, are you a do-it-yourselfer or do you use professional help?
For the latter, check out ifa.com. As to the former, check them out anyway and here are some alternatives to DFA funds using Vanguard or other:

Style Mutual Funds ETFs
Large Cap VFINX VV
Large Cap Value VIVAX VTV
Small Cap Value VISVX RZV (as Tom notes below, VBR may be a better choice here)
Micro Cap BRSIX IWC
REIT VGSIX VNQ
International Value VTRIX EFV
International Small VINEX DLS
Emerging Market VEIEX VWO

Note that VINEX is an actively-managed fund and is closed to new investors. So look at DLS. Also, these aren’t necessarily best for taxable accounts, especially the REIT or dividend paying funds.

Benchmark your results against one of IFA portfolios. Have you beat the indexes yourself? If not, why are you doing it yourself?

Mark Hebner talks about Step 4: Time Pickers. Did you realize that if you took away the 4 best days of the year in the market that you’d lose 90% of the returns for that year? Let’s see your Crystal Ball figure that one out.

Crystal Ball – Styx

Our Guru talks about how we make up stories to explain cause and effect in the markets. He stole my idea about using a sand pile as a metaphor for stock price movements (just kidding). Also, for some hard core reading regarding Power Laws… check this out.

I review the Portfolio Smackdown game.

Download the show directly MMM-059.mp3

Music from music.podshow.com
Alta Plaza – XRAY Dogs
Beach Town in the Off Season – The Hesh Inc
Arrival of the Fittest – Tara
Scorpio by Sean Mooney – Tara
The Pop Culture – DJ Top Shelf
Runaway Train – Under Feather

Tue, April 17 2007 » Podcasts

4 Responses

  1. recoveringTrader April 18 2007 @ 10:16 am

    Hi Paul,
    I enjoyed listening (and reading) your picks for the Do-It-Yourself investor who wants to emulate the IFA approach. After listening to your earlier shows and visiting ifa.com, I did a very similar exercise. Amazingly you and I came up with the exact same list of ETFs — except for one. I chose VBR for my U.S. small cap value investment instead of RZV.

    VBR has a lower expense ratio of .12 compared with RZV which has an expense ratio of .35. So I was wondering why you chose RZV? Am I missing something?

    Tom Collins
    Oxford, OH

  2. Paul Douglas Boyer April 18 2007 @ 10:28 am

    Nope, I think you got the right one there and I may have made a mistake with RZV. RZV is more value than VBR (price to book ratio of 1.3 vs. 1.7) but it is also lower market cap (545 vs 1470 million). And we already have a microcap with IWC. I also don’t like the trading volume of RZV right now. I actually own a few shares of RZV, but VBR is the better small cap value ETF.

    Thanks.

    BTW: other candidates are JKL, IWN, DSV, and IJS.

  3. hanks1415 April 20 2007 @ 2:48 pm

    I don’t see any problem with a name change for the show. I happen to agree with the “consipiracy theory” side of you on why there may be some problems with the show downloads. A guy with the ego and pull like his would surely use his influence to set up roadblocks if he so wished!
    The show is so good, I don’t think you’ll lose a lot of loyal listeners. Keep up the good work!

  4. yomomma2000 April 23 2007 @ 11:00 am

    Sorry, you conspiracy theorists, the same feed problems occur with “Garrison Keillor’s The Writers Almanac” on ITunes.