The conservative portfolio continues being our best performing portfolio, which is how you'd want a safe portfolio to do in a down market. Dragging it down are weak performance in the few stock funds in the portfolio. We are concerned about the future of bonds given that we see little room for rates to go anywhere but up from these levels. ...read the rest of this article»

We recently shifted some of our money market allocation in this fund into the very beaten down Vanguard Utilities Income fund. The fund rallied up, then promptly fee in recent market weakness. So far October looks strong for the fund. ...read the rest of this article»

While we were very big on bonds 2 years ago when we first started designing allocation portfolios, we are less enthusiastic today. Bonds have had strong returns in the last two years as interest rates have come down across the board. We feel we are at the bottom of an interest rate cycle. ...read the rest of this article»

We've cut back on funds that invest in REITs (real estate investment trusts) compared to our allocations of a couple years ago, as they have had a very good run-up in price since then. We feel the real estate market is long overdue for a correction. ...read the rest of this article»

Our other value stock pick besides the strong fund is the American Century Equity Income fund. We liked this fund a heck of a lot more a year ago, before it was flooded with new investor assets, but the fund still has some room to grow before it really begins to suffer. We're watching two things right now: asset levels and performance. If this fund breaks about $1.3 billion or so, or if we start seeing a slide in performance, we'll move into one of our backup choices. ...read the rest of this article»

The portfolio as a whole has been essentially flat, up just .022%. Stocks were weak this month, but this portfolio has a mere 25% stock position, and that in safer value type stocks. One large move was a - 4.49% pullback for the Strong Dividend Income fund. Since the fund is only 10% of assets, this didn't destroy the portfolios return.  ...read the rest of this article»

The Conservative portfolio reflects the areas of the world financial markets in which we feel an investor can safely earn a yield with some opportunity for appreciation. We are weighting toward out-of-favor areas like foreign and high-yield bonds, and passing on areas that are traditionally a larger part of a low-risk portfolio (like longer-term US government bonds). We feel those areas have run up to the point where the future potential is weak. ...read the rest of this article»