The Evergreen Portfolio: Timeless Strategies to Survive and Prosper from Investing Pros

Chapter 7. The Gone Fishin' Portfolio*

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Alexander Green

I'd like to share with you my single best idea for investors seeking long-term capital appreciation.

It's an investment system that allows you to increase your returns, reduce your risk, do an end-run around mountainous Wall Street fees, and keep the taxman at bay, too. It's called the Gone Fishin' Portfolio. And it comes as close as anything I've seen to guaranteeing long-term investment success.

The strategy itself is battle tested. It's built on the most advanced—and realistic—theories of money management. And it works, beating the S&P 500 every year—with far less risk than being fully invested in stocks—for well over a decade.

Moreover, in the pages ahead, I'm going to do something almost unheard of. I'm going to show you—very specifically—where to put your money. And then I'm going to show you how to run it year after year. Once you've set up your portfolio as I suggest, managing it will take less than 20 minutes a year.

The Gone Fishin' Portfolio is based on an entirely realistic premise—that, to a great extent, the future is unknowable. So don't expect me to draw on my gift of prophecy and tell you what's going to happen to the economy, interest rates, the dollar, or world stock markets. (No one is more surprised than me how market action unfolds each year.) Nor will we ignore the investment clouds or pretend we have a system that has eliminated them. Instead, we're going to use uncertainty, make it our friend. In short, ...