OK gang, I am looking around myself for a good way to invest about $30k in an IRA. For some reason I had bought ATT several years back and sold yesterday being less than thrilled over the spying issue, the lawsuits, and their future acquisition plans. Looking for an ETF or fund also, because I want to be able to relax and not worry about such things with individual stocks so much.
I have ~75% in taxable accounts and ~25% in IRAs. I'm trying to get a handle on all the things that one "should" or "shouldn't" put in tax-deferred accounts. Bernstein goes so far as to say person X in one of his example allocations "can't" put most asset classes in his taxable accounts. He also uses words like "forbidden"
!
I listed my wacky portfolio elsewhere. I made some adjustments using the advice on this board to get into some REITs and foreign bonds where there was cash to do so (I picked IGR and GIM, in tax-deferred/non-tax accounts).
The overall picture right now is this:
S-Intl-Large %30.69
S-US Large Cap 28.77
S-US Small Cap 11.11
Cash 8.18
B-Long Term gov't 7.86 (TLT)
S-Intl-Emerging 4.85 (EEM)
B-Med. Term gov't 4.71 (TIPS)
REIT 1.73 (IGR)
B-Internat'l 1.45 (FAX and GIM)
S-US Mid Cap 0.56
Other… 0.14
In the Roth (about 20% of holdings) it's this:
S-US Large Cap %82.48
REIT 8.29 (IGR)
Cash 5.94
S-Intl-Large 1.52
B-Internat'l 1.38 (FAX)
S-US Mid Cap 0.42
In the SAR-SEP (about 5% of holdings, which I plan to rollover bit-by-bit into the Roth) the situation is this:
Cash %57.82
S-US Large Cap 26.27
B-Internat'l 7.85 (GIM)
S-Intl-Large 4.94
S-Intl-Small 3.14
In the retirement accounts, everything is individual stocks except as noted. "S" and "B" means stocks and bonds, respectively.
I now infer that I "shouldn't" have TLT, TIPS, EEM(?) in a taxable account, but that's where the cash was to invest at the time... Should I sell some bonds and put them in the SAR-SEP (don't want to take a CG hit on EEM) now that the cash to invest is there? Or would you add more IGR and GIM? I would take a look at other asset classes that I have none of, like commodities and PM, but they seem overly hot right now. Similarly, I might buy more foreign indexes if I didn't already have a huge foreign exposure in my taxable account.
...I'm dealing with decisions that were made years ago, before I knew anything about asset allocation, and everything has developed in a kind of bass-ackwards way...
What are really the "best" investments to put in retirement accounts and which are to be avoided?
my head is spinning.. help!