Note on
Fidelity's Freedom Funds
Fidelity's Freedom funds are designed
for investors targeting specific retirement dates as opposed
to style focuses (Growth or Income). The longer the targeted
time period, the more equity exposure the fund has. As the target
date becomes closer, the funds reduce their stock exposure and
increase bond and cash equivalent holdings to lower the investor's
risk of a loss.
The Freedom funds
offer a passive approach to portfolio management that may appeal
to some retirement plan participants. However, we believe the
asset allocation decisions provided by these funds are crude
at best. The Freedom Funds attempt to make a decision about
an investor's asset mix based solely on age. An investor's financial
goals (desire for gains) and tolerance for risk are other key
factors that should ultimately determine investment strategy
and asset allocation. Ideally, your wealth, desire for gains,
risk tolerance, as well as your age and investment time horizon
are all considered carefully when developing the proper asset
allocation for your portfolio. Because of the "mechanical approach"
to changing the asset allocations over time and the Freedom
Funds' mediocre performance, we prefer an active approach to
portfolio management.
Company Stock
As a general rule of diversification, no single stock should
represent more than 10% of your total investment portfolio.
We believe this is a good guideline for ownership of company
stock in your 401(k). Most individual stocks are much more volatile
than mutual funds. To the extent you invest more in your company's
stock, your overall portfolio will exhibit more volatility (risk),
and retirement investing is not about hitting home runs, but
about consistently hitting singles and doubles.
That being said,
many corporations often match a portion of employee retirement
plan contributions with company stock, offer employees attractive
incentives to purchase company stock either within or outside
of retirement accounts, or include stock or stock options as
part of employee compensation. We recommend that employees take
full advantage of these opportunities, but remember to keep
their total company stockholdings within reasonable levels.
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