How To Not Check Your Retirement Portfolio

There are different types of retirement investors and ultimately, different approaches to growing your money. Some investors play the high stakes game of competing against the market itself. These investors have entered the largest poker tournament the world has to offer. And who has joined these gamblers at the table? Teams of the smartest minds, best researchers, and leading technologists backed by shocking large coffers – Wall Street professionals that are in it to win it.

Investors who have decided to enter this tournament via day trading, market timing, technical analysis or even tactical asset allocation, need to pay close attention. You are playing a game that is very difficult to win, especially if you have fewer resources, knowledge and technology than your competition. Oh, sure, you might be lucky enough to win a few early hands but the long-term outcome is fairly predictable. Such investors live with a prevailing sense of unrest knowing that they have shown up to a shotgun duel carrying a pocketknife.

Wealthy families, endowments and elite institutions practice a different investment approach. These investors are wise enough to avoid, paying fees to managers trying to “beat” the averages in public stock markets. Sure, they may invest in private equity and venture capital where they enjoy an advantage via access to the best deals and terms. But when it comes to public markets, these investors commit a large portion of their portfolio to passive indexed strategies – the MarketRiders approach. The only bet such investors are making is that the world is in fact not coming to an end any time soon and that its markets, companies and their portfolio will continue to grow over long periods of time.

This approach provides amazing freedom from having to stare at your portfolio several times a day. Unconcerned about the daily gyrations of Jim Cramer and the rest of the bobble-headed finance media, long-term and disciplined MarketRiders can go about their daily lives with peace of mind. Sure, the market is down May and your portfolio probably dropped with it, but with a retirement time-horizon that is years away, your portfolio will not only recover, but grow quite nicely. And by rebalancing you are taking advantage of these swings. This knowledge frees you from staring at a computer monitor and gives you time to go about the real business of living your life. In the end, isn’t that what the money is actually for?