Never Buy Another Stock Again: The Investing Portfolio that Will Preserve Your Wealth and Your Sanity

7. Buying a Portfolio—And Selling It

“Regardless of the frequency of rebalancing, fidelity to assetallocation targets proves important as a means of risk control and return enhancement.”

David Swensen, head of Yale University’s endowment

The data previously cited about the long-term prowess of stocks does suggest that someone with an investment horizon of about 70 years (so if you’re about 13 years old and just got a bunch of bonds for your Bar Mitzvah, I’m talking to you) would do well to stick with indexing and leave it at that. But it’s not a realistic option for those looking at the last ten years of investment returns and seeing the paltry gains in all funds to say that leaving one’s money alone is enough to satisfy anyone. It’s simply ...