Thread by @MebFaber

So over the past few years I've held hundreds, if not thousands, of Office Hour phone calls all with the goal of helping investors craft better portfolios.

Here's a summary.

For those unfamiliar, this is when I open up my calendar, sharing 30-minute phone calls with anyone interested. We discuss markets, various portfolios and strategies, the Broncos, good beers, whatever.

The investors are global, pro and individual alike.

There were some interesting takeaways from these chats. First, nearly everyone I talked with seemed to believe that his or her fears/goals/portfolio/market challenges were largely unique…

They weren’t.

In general, many of you are often in the same situation, which, in a nutshell, is:

1. Your portfolios are a bowl of soup of random investments, seemingly cobbled together over time (what @ReformedBroker calls mutual fund salad)

2. Despite the fragmented, random nature of these portfolios, you are emotionally-wedded to your current holdings

3. You tend to have a binary view on investing, meaning think in terms of either 100% in an investment, or 100% out (ie “should I keep it, or should I sell it?”

4. You harbor a secret desire to gamble, and are looking for me (or someone else) to forecast the future so you can satisfy this desire

5. All the aforementioned takeaways persist and are exacerbated since you do not have a personal (written) investing plan. And the vast majority of you don't:

https://twitter.com/MebFaber/status/1054832694348066816

So, it's time to stop messing around. Here's a few ideas to get started:

If you have at least 30 – 60 minutes (preferably more) right now, begin this very moment. If not, open your calendar, and pick a day/time when you’ll dedicate 100% of your focus to your portfolio.

Without looking at your own portfolio, think about what portfolio you would construct right now, looking forward, if you had to sell everything and start over. We wrote about this nearly two years ago in a post titled “The Zero Budget Portfolio”.

mebfaber.com/2017/01/03/zer…

Line up your current portfolio beside your blank slate portfolio. Any holdings in your current portfolio that are not in your blank slate portfolio get the axe.

Need some ideas to get started? Here's our free book on asset allocation:

cambriainvestments.com/investing-insi…