Week 366 - A Capitalization-weighted Watch List for Russell 1000 Companies

Situation: Every stock-picker needs to confine her attention to a manageable list of companies, called a “Watch List.” Here at ITR, the focus is on investing for retirement. So, our interest is in companies that have a higher dividend yield than the S&P 500 Index. Why? Because your original investment will be returned to you faster, which automatically gives your portfolio a higher “net present value” than a portfolio composed of companies that pay either no dividend or a small dividend. Once you’ve retired, you’ll switch from reinvesting dividends to spending dividends.

Mission: Assemble a Watch List composed of companies that are “Blue Chips” (see Week 361), companies that are in “The 2 and 8 Club” (see Week 344), and companies that are in the Extended Version of “The 2 and 8 Club” (see Week 362). 

Execution: see Table.

Bottom Line: If you’re saving for retirement and would like to pick some individual stocks to supplement your index funds, here is an effective and reasonably safe Watch List. However, the mutual funds that pick individual stocks haven’t done very well compared to benchmark index funds. So, your chances of doing well as a stock-picker also aren’t good. But index funds like the SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) expose you to significant downside risk. There is one conservatively managed mutual fund that we think is an excellent retirement investment, the Vanguard Wellesley Income Fund, which is mostly composed of bonds. Your risk of loss from owning VWINX is less than half that from owning SPY; the 10-Yr Total Return is 7.0%/yr vs. 9.0%/yr for SPY.

Risk Rating for our Watch List: 7 (where US Treasury Notes = 1, S&P 500 Index = 5, and gold bullion = 10).

Full Disclosure: I dollar-average into MSFT, JPM, XOM, WMT, PG, KO, IBM, CAT and NEE, and also own shares of GOOGL, CSCO, MCD, MMM, TRV, CMI and ADM.

"The 2 and 8 Club" (CR) 2018 Invest Tune Retire.com All rights reserved.

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