Sorry to post here (even on this site) with this, but I know the players here somewhat and I know who to trust and believe. I'm coming into a chunk of money and I don't want to trade it - just not consistent enough in the markets. I want to place it in a management firm, but I have no idea how to separate wheat from chaff. Any tips?
Much depends on the time-span you will definitely be able to / wish to leave the sum untouched, which brings in other investments, life events, inheritance etc. Long-term (20+ years) I'd be interested in dividend-paying blue chip shares or property. Over less than 10 years I'd actually use the money in long-term trading.
Why would you want to give to any of these bums who will take your fees and under perform long term. You do trade,build one yourself. I give you recommendation,reprinted from very sharp trader and investor.This is from 2010,there is no harm,update the chosen investments and see how you would do since then. by machinehead Many of you will recognize today’s author from his insightful comments that appear frequently across PeakProsperity.com. The 5MM portfolio was a very different story. During a terrible decade for traditional investments, 5MM racked up a sparking 12.39% compounded annual return, beating the long-term 10% expected of stocks. Standard deviation was 16.52%, about the same as stocks' long-term average (note that stocks' standard deviation rose to a towering 20% in the shaky past decade). 5MM's Sharpe ratio was 0.60 -- half again higher than stocks' 0.40 level during the favorable second half of the 20th century. A $100,000 account in 5MM would have grown to $347,527 by last month, says the simulation. These are superb results, as indicated by the 5MM portfolio suffering only a single losing year out of eleven -- in 2008. However, it was a heavy loss: 25.75% -- more than a conservative investor would accept. Unusually, all eight components of the 5MM portfolio lost value that year. To tame this still uncomfortably high volatility, retirees are recommended to put half their portfolio in CDs, which behave like T-bills, but with slightly higher yields. The results for this 5MM/2 portfolio are shown in the rightmost column of the tables. Again, there was a single losing year, now held to less than an 11% loss -- compared to five double-digit annual gains. Compounded annual return was a robust 8.46%. Practically, this means that one could have taken 5% annual cash distributions for income, and still have obtained an average 3.46% annual gain to keep the principal value ahead of inflation. Moreover, 5MM/2's standard deviation of 8.14% is half that of stocks: this is a 'no sleepless nights' portfolio, par excellence. Its Sharpe ratio of 0.73 is outstanding -- better than the 0.67 Sharpe ratio achieved by a 60/40 balanced portfolio during the mostly bull-market years of 1983-2004, according to historical statistics cited by PanAgora Asset Management [Ref. 7]. A $100,000 investment in 5MM/2 increased to a simulated $237,776. To lapse into the vernacular for a moment, the 5MM and 5MM/2 portfolios just smoked the living crap out of any traditional portfolio in the past decade. They performed as if the Roaring Nineties never left. This result is an outlier, a dream, a freak of nature! Or is it? Reasonably, one can't expect such extreme outperformance to continue, given hindsight bias and curve fitting. But even after handicapping the model by several percentage points to offset these factors, it still delivered highly respectable, robust performance under unprecedentedly poor market conditions. https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/guest-post-investing-one-lesson/44577
Stevie Cohan when he comes back or maybe Allen Gray if he's taking US and you meet minimums. If I want really passive and I have strong investing theme views I would mix in some mid to lower cost ETFs. There are a handful of mothers that come to mind like in Chiccago. You'd need to do some homne homework and look at size commit/require or as I said do it all in ETF. If you don't want hedge funds and their accompanying fees then look at the ETF.ETN marketplaces at Vanguard,Schwab, etc. If you look at the 13Fs of most of the U.S. managers many disclose their biggest holdings as SPY and or QQQQQ to anchor their portfolios - why pay fee while getting that exposure theough a fund ? Just buy them outright. I also like Heartland in Milwaukee - fund family so a bit lower priced from a fee standpoint and profitable without derivs. in 2008.
Until the markets crack, a newbie investor has no one to talk to with an established relationship, panics, sell at the relative low, and never ventures into equities again.