Mary's Penny Picks

[Reindeer830]

Hi Mary. We had our annual review with Fidelity today as they manage our retirement account. Has always been easy with good annual growth minus their fees as I retired in 2009 (after the 2007-2009 mess) and always concludes with a nice lunch. The advisory team offers their suggested mix of stocks; bonds; international; cash equivalents and I ask them what they think of my more aggressive approach. We meet somewhere in the middle and agree on our monthly draw; withdrawals from our sons 529 acct and then schedule any one time withdrawals for: car purchase; house projects; daughters wedding etc and then everything gets signed & turned over to managed account team and we relax for another year. Fidelity has produced some impressive annual returns preserving our principal over last 8 years.

The reason I'm saying all this is the first year I asked the dumb question of "what stocks is our money in?" And the answer is/was we don't own any individual stocks per se. Everything is in funds - all kinds of funds of Fidelity and others- hundreds of them. The management fees we pay ensure that they keep our money "balanced" as appropriate. They move money in and out of sectors/segments as the market changes. One example is energy or international heavy funds as their projections seem to change often.

I found myself sitting in the review thinking about SB and ONCI/Hexagon. This is exactly what SB is doing with our money. He is adding different sectors where he thinks we can get a good return on our investment. Hexagon Holdings is sort of like a mutual fund. He moves money into something where he thinks the return will be good and will have the ability to pull our money out by selling off investments or shutting those down that don't have a good prospect of producing favorable returns. Right now, we are heavy on DD & other auto apps. He understands the need to have several different revenue streams to reduce our risk & exposure and is building them as we go forward. He will determine the right balanced mix for maximum returns.

I'll close by saying I'm very comfortable with Fidelity and Steve Berman. Go ONCI