Well you are partially right and mostly wrong. I did read the ETF guide on SeekingAlpha several months ago, and while I agree with you it is a good guide, call mecrazy but I happen to think that a
ETF guide that starts off with 57 (yes I counted) hyperlinks can be intimidating. Even the one page summary is a bit much with a bunch of bullet points, for somebody who doesn't appear to be a sophisticated investor.
In contrast the Morningstar primer on ETF is much more user friendly
http://news.morningstar.com/article/article.asp?id=3503&_QSBPA=Y&dType=etf, and yet M* has plenty of additional data on ETFs.
I subscribe to the SeekingAlpha email digest and generally read 2 to 3 articles a day so I am familiar with it. Don't get me wrong nothing wrong with SeekingAlpha, just IMO a bit much for the novice.
As to M*, it is pretty much the gold standard for mutual fund analysis. I am sorry you didn't find the M* X-ray tool useful. I find it invaluable. It tells me that have 30% of my portfolio in Large Cap growth stocks, 9% in small cap value, 9.9% in foreign stocks, 55% of my portfolio is US stocks 5% European, bonds 33%, 2.5% cash . It doesn't break down Foreign large cap vs Foreign small cap, but I think it does everything else you are looking for. I wish it could automatically import my brokerage statements but other than that.
As for FundAdvice, I looked at found several years ago and found it to be a big ad for Peter Merriman and the DFA Fund family. Just now, I went back and read the must read articles and concluded that it is still a big ad, but even worse following the advice could cause serious trouble to your portfolio.
Lets take a couple of the must read articles.
"The best mutual funds: DFA or Vanguard?"
http://www.fundadvice.com/articles/buy-hold/the-best-mutual-fund-dfa-or-vanguard-.html
"I’m going to compare and contrast two great families of low-cost, no-load mutual funds that do a lot of seemingly small things right: Vanguard and Dimensional Fund Advisors.
You’re probably familiar with Vanguard, a very large fund family that specializes in index funds and is legendary in the industry for cutting its expenses to the bone. Vanguard is our favorite fund family for do-it-yourself investors. We often recommend these funds to investors of all ages and all levels of wealth.
Dimensional Fund Advisors funds have some important advantages over Vanguard, as we shall see. I believe those advantages over time could mean an extra two percentage points of annualized return."
Of course he neglects to point out until near the end that the ordinary investors can't invest in DFA fund, they are only available to through a financial advisor. (Of course Peter Merriman firm has lots of them).
Does he present us with lots of data to back up this claim? not a lot except for a 12 month snap shot of DFA vs Vanguard.. His main complaint with Vanguard doesn't offer a microcap fund or a small cap international fund.
His conclusion is this
"If you can afford to hire an advisor and you’re willing to pay for one, I recommend Dimensional funds. I believe that over the long term they will have an advantage of about two percentage points per year as compared to equity funds at Vanguard, even after subtracting a presumed 1 percent annual management fee.
For an investor accumulating assets, two extra percentage points of return can make the difference between retiring when you want to and having to work longer."
Hum so I should fork over 1% to my financial advisor just so I can have the privilege of investing in DFA and pay their slightly higher ER.
Lets take a look at a second article The ultimate buy-and-hold strategy
Here is the money quote
"If there is a “catch” to this strategy, it’s availability. You can’t buy it in a single mutual fund. You can put it together approximately using Vanguard’s low-cost index funds. But Vanguard doesn’t give investors access to every piece of it.
The “ultimate” way to implement the Ultimate Buy-and-Hold Strategy is to hire a money manager who has access to the institutional funds offered by Dimensional Fund Advisors. (More about those funds later.) "
Finally lets look at a 3rd article:
This article show how you can withdraw 8% per year with an inflation kicker, as long as at least 60% of the money is invested in the Global Equity Fund and the rest in the Global Bond Fund. Two guess as where you can buy these uber-funds. I am sorry but anybody who shows me an inflation adjusted 8% withdrawal starting in 1970 is either stupid, or being disingenious. I vote for the latter, because the trick for getting this miracle is to restrict the inflation adjustment to 3.5% a year, which may be a reasonable assumption under normal years but not for the 1970s. (But the end of the decade with withdrawals increasing only 3.5% year your purchasing power dropped by almost 30%)
My advice is to stay away Fundadvice.com especially for somebody newyorklady who has smartly dumped her financial advisor.
Like most of the do it yourselfers I am naturally suspicious of any financial advisor, I am hardly alone in my opinion that the 1% you pay to FA makes it harder to retire early. (This is somewhat ironic since I am taking classes to become a CFP.) Still an 8% withdrawal with an "inflation kicker" is so much higher than any study has shown as prudent withdrawal rate that, I think it is dangerous to direct people to any website advocating it. Hence my strong reaction.
