Old Shooter, Good point. I don't need a lot of US equity if it would skew my asset allocation; I agree more world equity would be more prudent for my situation. Is there a Fido equivalent to VTWAX?
Last time I checked Fido did not have an equivalent. But I have read that Abigail Johnson, who runs daddy's company, thinks passive investment is just a fad, so that's no big surprise that there is no total world market fund. You can get the same thing, though, with 45%/55% combination of a total US market fund and a total international market fund. You'll just have to rebalance every year or three. But AFIK you can also just buy VTWAX into a Fido account.
I think I paid more attention to Morningstar ratings. Allocation funds represented my tendency to hedge my bets with 5 star funds that were not as volatile as straight up equity or bonds.
"Star"ratings are widely misunderstood, partially because M* chose to let that happen. They tell you nothing about a fund except how it compared with similar funds
in the past. The worst performing sector and the best performing sector in M*'s list have one thing in common: 10% of the funds have 5 stars. There was a furor a year or so ago because WSJ published a study showing that the stars have no predictive value at all. M* somewhat reluctantly admitted this. You might find some of that material interesting if you can Google it up or stop at a library to get behind the WSJ paywall.
Yet the mixture of objectives also make for a lower overall performance. Overall I'm at about 13% for the year. I felt I didn't need to be so aggressive at my age (61). In depth analysis is out of my league, but I can always use Fidelity's tools and Free Advisor. All the free advisor cares about is that I leave my funds at Fidelity and not move them to Vanguard, he does not specifically automatically advocate for the use of Fido funds.
Nothing wrong with lower performance if your objective leads to you to it and you understand why you're there. There are some happy people here who hold no equities at all.
Re the Fido guy: One of you is the customer and one is not the customer. Which one do you think you are? ... ... Right!
You should ignore what the advisor cares about. It is your money not his. And if this creates a problem ask the branch manager for a different advisor who does understand that he/she is not the customer.
I suppose the same argument holds true for Retirement Series Funds that invest in various Index or Mutual Funds--you cannot adequately analyze them. I'm about to leave retirement and start a job with retirement benefits. Of the low cost offerings, I can pick from a Vanguard Target Fund, and several individual Vanguard Index funds with SP 500, Mid, Small, INTL, Bond, MM objectives. I've decided I 'm going for a Roth IRA and Roth 401K. I've been struggling with my allocation since I already have a sizeable TIRA I won't need to access until required to do so at 70.
IMO, with a fairly complex portfolio any blended fund just adds complexity without adding value. Target date funds were invented to serve the needs of naive young investors. You are not naive and, probably, not young either.
Always look at your allocation in total without regards to which piece is in which account. If all your funds are at Fido they should have a tool to do this for you. That said, as @pb4 points out, there is some useful fine tuning between accounts for tax reasons.
