Someone from a forum asked about my real money and how I invest for the long term. Since I wrote back to him I thought the rest of you may like to see my response.

Yep – all my retirement and other finds are basically in INDEX funds. I have a few mutual funds but the majority are in holdings of: SPY, QQQQ, MDY – These are the SP500 index, Nasdaq Index  and Mid-Cap Index. I was a register investment advisor with Merrill Lynch and Citibank, back in the early 90’s. I learned one important thing, a high percentage of money mangers (ie. Mutual fund managers) can NOT beat the index they compete against. So my strategy a few years ago was to move the money to those Index funds. I have a few others look at this Yahoo Chart link:

Yahoo Charts for my Index Funds

Those are my major holdings – anywhere from 6-16% YTD.

I’ve told everyone if you just want to start – buy SPY – The S&P500 Index – you are always going to get what the market is returning. As I said in other forums – Forex is a way from keeping me wasting my real money. I’ve had too many instances where I said – hey let’s buy some GOOG options. When you lose you lose and it hurts your overall portfolio. Now I just leave the real money alone, and get my excitement from Forex. No more gambling with retirement funds.

Minnelli