Book Description

This book is written for the serious mutual fund investor seeking a new and very different approach to mutual fund portfolio construction. It introduces F.S.I. ("Fund Screen Investigation"), the author's proprietary process for mutual fund portfolio construction. The process is highly structured, analytic, quantitative, and based on a set of assumptions regarding the workings of markets and investor psychology. The acknowledgment and measurement of risk is central to the process. A theme that resonates throughout the book is that things are not always as they appear in the investment world. Accordingly, the reader is offered a new perspective for viewing the investment world and specific suggestions for what to focus on. "Show me the numbers!" is a refrain that reflects and underscores this theme. Fundamental investment topics such as allocation, correlation, diversification, and index investing are also discussed. F.S.I. provides the blueprints for constructing discrete portfolios that vary by historical levels of risk and return. Readers can variably weight these portfolios with their investment dollars to express their overall level of risk tolerance and objectives, thereby creating a uniquely personal investment strategy, and one which offers a significant degree of flexibility, facilitating modification if circumstances change. This flexibility is of particular importance to retirees and investors approaching retirement as they formulate their individual plans.