Thanks for the info, everyone. What Bread says is kind of what I
thinking, but stated much more clearly. Most of my money's in the two
retirement funds, but I have this extra that I'd like to play around
with, sort of as a way to learn more about investing, but also to make
it all a little more interesting. I was thinking/hoping that doing it
within the context of my IRA would eliminate the trading costs.

I'm not sure yet what to do about the old 401k. I neglected to check
on what fees they may be charging me, so if those turn out to be high,
I'll probably move the funds. Otherwise, I may let it sit while I
think some more.

<screenaccount[at]gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1176177499.277587.170020[at]q75g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...
- quote -

Do you have any other investments outside of this "retirement" holdings ?

You already are into funds that in themselves are diverse.

Here is another way at looking at things... the S&P funds,
and how they approach segmenting the S&P into 9 strategic areas of investing -
SPDRs.
http://www.spdrindex.com/performance/
but then....
http://news.morningstar.com/etf/Lists/ETFReturns.html
..
There are 9 SPDR Select Sectors. Together they make up the S&P500.

The concept of the retirement fund investing is like gambling...
You can afford the risk early and when you are young,
but then as you get older, or are at the table longer,
you want to safeguard the nestegg & winnings,
so you shift into less-risky areas so as to not loose principle
while chasing returns.

The "sectors" will shift from time to time -
just like the HUGE run up in tech back in 2000,
or the run up in energy last year...

So - as long as you keep putting money into your current holdings,
and they already diversify your investments.... you are good to go.

Sandra Loosemore <sandra[at]frogsonice.com> writes:
- quote -

True enough.

- quote -

OTOH, if one has the bulk of one's long-term don't-think-about-it
money in a well diversified and managed fund (or funds - ie. the
pair of that target-retirement and freedom funds), there's room
for one to "play" a little bit at the margin. With a total
investable assets base of $37k, if the OP wants to put, say,
15 or 20% into non-diversified investments (ie. individual
stocks, sector funds, etc) it seems safe enough.

- quote -

Not too messy if it's all in IRA/401ks. No need to track cost
basis or report proceeds of individual trades to the IRA (though
quicken makes it easy enough) and the difference between managing
and tracking 3 funds versus 5 funds isn't too big a deal.

- quote -

What you do by keeping the bulk of your assets in diversified
investments which are invested roughly proportional to market
weights (presumably how they are invested via those target
retirement funds) and then putting a bit more into one or
two sectors (or styles - ie. value) is not adding to diversification
so much as "overweighting". If you believe that, say, long-term,
healthcare is going to outperform the market as a whole, you
probably don't want to go *all* healthcare, but you might
want slightly more healthcare exposure than an index would
give you. The easy way to do that is to buy an index for
the bulk and a sector fund for the overweight. Don't go
overboard - never forget what happened to Tech a couple
of years ago!

- quote -

Very true enough. Moreover, the expenses on those MS funds
are almost certainly much higher than the expenses on the
Vanguard and Fido funds you mention, aside from the questions
of whether your 401k admin is dinging you for admin fees, and
additionally - do you really want to have to keep dealing with your
old employer (or his agent) on a long-term ongoing basis?
I'd much rather deal with Fido or Vanguard directly. That
alone is a big plus for a rollover.

- quote -

You probably don't need to roll it out of the old 401k.
But you might want to anyway and there's really no
downside to moving it into that Vanguard fund you've
already got opened as an IRA. In the IRA you can
freely reallocate it later without tax consequences,
and you will have that much less to have to track or
pay attention to, and one less administrator do deal
with.

--
Plain Bread alone for e-mail, thanks. The rest gets trashed.
No HTML in E-Mail! -- http://www.expita.com/nomime.html
Are you posting responses that are easy for others to follow?
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting

"screenaccount[at]gmail.com" <screenaccount[at]gmail.com> writes:

- quote -

I've just said this in another thread, but I'll say it again: Hardly
anybody really needs sector funds in their asset allocation plan.
Especially if you're just starting out investing, don't have a whole
lot of money to throw around, and don't really know what you're doing,
stay away! On top of exposing you to additional risk and the danger of
"chasing returns", investing in a lot of sector funds also gives you
higher expenses and trading fees, and makes a lot of extra work for you in
keeping an eye on all those funds, reading their shareholder reports, etc.

- quote -

Your target retirement funds are already about as diversified as they
can be. You don't really need to invest elsewhere for diversification
purposes.

- quote -

That's called "chasing returns". Repeat after me: past performance is
no guarantee of future returns. On top of that, you said above that
you "need" to roll the money out of your old 401k. If you don't
"need" to do that after all, I'd just leave the money where it is and
not reallocate or divert any of it until you educate yourself and come
up with an asset allocation plan.

-Sandra the cynic

Hi, there. Here's my situation: I'm 37 and have the following
investments (not enough for my age, I know):

$12K in Vanguard Target Retirement Fund, IRA
$11K in Fidelity Freedom Fund, current 401k
$14K in the following Morgan Stanley fund mix, old 401k:
- Van Kampen Corporate Bond Fund - Class A 5%
- Van Kampen Equity and Income Fund - Class A 10%
- Alger Capital Appreciation Institutional Fund - Class I 35%
- Oppenheimer International Growth Fund - Class A 20%
- Oppenheimer Small- & Mid- Cap Value Fund - Class A 10%
- Van Kampen American Value Fund - Class A 20%

I'm not maxing out my current 401k, but I am putting enough in to max
out my employer contribution. I'm not maxing out my IRA, either; I
maybe put a couple thousand into it last year. I'd like to max out
both, but I live in an expensive city...

Anyway, I need to roll the $14K in my old 401k into something else. I
was thinking of using it to invest in particular sectors, most likely
health care and real estate, and perhaps some international and
emerging markets stuff. Two questions about that:

1) Portions of the Vanguard and Fidelity funds already invest in those
sectors. Would that overlap be a bad idea?

2) If I'm interpreting my statement correctly, the old 401k (the one
to roll over) went up about 20% last year (due mostly to the
Institutional and International funds). The Vanguard IRA, in contrast,
went up only by a little under 8%, and the Fidelity fund gave me back
just about 9%. I wonder, then, if I shouldn't just leave the money in
the old 401k (with perhaps a bit of reallocation), and divert some of
it more toward the sector funds I wanted.

Any thoughts or other suggestions? Thanks in advance.