Alexander Green - The Gone Fishin' Portfolio

6 Perhaps most importantly, it guarantees that your time will be your own. Rather than spending countless hours evaluating stocks, market trends or fund managers, you'll spend your time as you please. While others struggle to manage their money effectively, you'll have “gone fishin’.”

This last point means that instead of spending countless hours fretting over your investment portfolio, you'll be able to relax … play golf … travel the world … spend more time with your kids or grandkids … or just swing on a hammock in the shade with a glass of ice-cold lemonade. Because your investments will be on autopilot.

This is not just a strategy for today's markets, incidentally. The Gone Fishin’ Portfolio is designed to prosper—and generate peace of mind—through all market environments. And I invite you to be skeptical. In fact, let me begin by asking you a question.

If I could show you a way to manage your money yourself, using a strategy that is as powerful and effective as any used by the nation's top institutions, that will allow you to outperform the vast majority of investment professionals, pay nothing in sales charges, brokerage fees or commissions, that will take less than 20 minutes a year to implement, and that is based on an investment strategy so sophisticated it won the Nobel Prize in economics, would you be interested?

I hope so. That, in a nutshell, is the Gone Fishin’ Portfolio. It's about handling the money you intend to retire on simply, effectively and cost-efficiently, with the absolute minimum of time and attention.

If you're like most people I know, you have better things to do than watch your stocks bounce up and down all day.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not averse to trading stocks. (Long-term investing and short-term trading are not mutually exclusive activities.) But short-term trading strategies are beyond the scope of this book. Instead of focusing on trading or speculating, we're going to focus here on the money you intend to retire on—and perhaps ultimately leave to your kids, your grandkids or your favorite charity. This is money that shouldn't be treated like chips in a poker game.

Reaching financial independence is a serious goal, one that should be pursued in a disciplined, rigorous way.

That's why I recommend that you make the Gone Fishin’ Portfolio the foundation of your long-term investment program. The philosophy behind it is based on the best investment thinking available. It has been tested in various economic conditions. It can increase your returns while reducing risk. And it will minimize your investment costs and annual taxes on your portfolio.

Best of all, it works. Investors who have put their money to work this way have enjoyed years of excellent returns while taking less risk than being fully invested in stocks.

I invite you to join them.

I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense.

Source: Common Sense, Thomas Paine

A while back, some friends and I were vacationing in Key West and decided to do some deep-sea fishing.

We didn't have a boat, so we went to a local marina to see what we could charter. There were several boats available, so we began talking to various captains.

Most assured us that the fishing was excellent and encouraged us to hire them for the next day, before someone else booked them. But since we were in no hurry, we took our time and kept wandering down the dock chatting with the crews of different charters.

Near the end of the dock, we saw an older captain leaning back comfortably in his captain's chair with a beer in one hand and a cigar in the other.

“How's the fishin’ been lately?” I asked.

“The fishin's been great,” he said. “But the catchin’,” he added with a shake of his head, “the catchin’ ain't been so good.”

“Why not?” we asked, a little surprised given the positive spin we had gotten from the other boat captains.

He said the weather had been unseasonably cool. That had affected migration patterns. The big schools of fish hadn't shown up yet. “Nobody's been catchin’ much lately,” he said.

We looked at each other in disappointment.

“It's still great weather to go out,” he added. “And the fish might show up,” he said after a long puff on his cigar. “You never know.”

The prospect of spending the afternoon on the water without catching anything more than a bout of seasickness wasn't terribly appealing. So we huddled to talk about what we wanted to do. After a little discussion, we decided we were willing to risk going out. We also agreed we wanted to use the old boat captain.

Unlike the others, he hadn't blown any smoke up our skirts. He wasn't interested in talking us into a fishing trip. He didn't seem to particularly care whether we hired him or not. As a result, he did something nobody else did. He told us the truth. So we hired him.

We knew we were running the risk of paying to sit on the water all day without so much as a nibble. We could live with that. And, if we didn't catch anything, well, at least we went out with our eyes wide open.

The next day the weather was perfect. Despite his laid-back attitude, the captain and his mate were good company and gave first-rate service. And the “catchin’”? It was the best fishing I'd ever experienced—then or since.

A few hours after he got us out to his “spot,” the ocean suddenly filled with so many dolphin—mahi—that the water turned yellow.

After a couple hours, our arms were tired. We literally couldn't hoist any more in. When we returned to port, we were giving away fish to the crew, other anglers who had come back empty-handed, even strangers on the dock. Our coolers weren't big enough to hold them all. (And, in case you don't know, fresh Florida mahi is just about the best-tasting fish around.)

What does this story have to do with your investment portfolio? Only this: I'd like to do for you what that boat captain did for us that day. I want to tell you the unvarnished truth, with no promises and no agenda.

I'd like to help you meet your long-term investment goals. But I don't want to sell you a financial plan, charge you a commission or wrap fee, or manage your money. I don't need you to subscribe to my investment letter or buy my other books. I just want to give you the straight dope with no strings attached. Believe it or not, that's a rare thing in the world of investing.

Think about it. When was the last time you received investment advice from someone who was both qualified to give it and had nothing to sell? Not a mutual fund, a trading service, a financial plan, a software program, a brokerage account, an insurance policy, an annuity or a managed account. Nothing.

You might think you at least get independent investment advice from the national media, but think again. Cable television parades endless pundits across the screen, all with ever-changing opinions about the economy and the markets, all to sell advertising—much of it investment-related. The financial press maintains a circus of activity as well. Headlines shout, “Retire Rich,” “Five Healthcare Stocks to Buy Today,” “Double Your Investment Income,” “The Shortcut to Seven Figures,” “Is This Bull Market Over?” and so on.

The Gone Fishin’ Portfolio is an antidote to all this noise and confusion. It is the distillation of much of what I've learned over more than 35 years as an investment analyst, portfolio manager and financial writer. It is the key to financial freedom—if you have the discipline to see it through. To benefit from this investment system, you need only follow three simple steps:

1 Read this book carefully to get a thorough understanding of how this strategy works—and why.