If you are a retiree, you were likely gripped with fear and anxiety when the market crumbled in 2008.  I was!    I knew that I could not live off the meager fraction of a percent that I received from “safe” Certificate of Deposits (CD).  Over the long run, I knew I would need the higher return from stocks.  But I could not afford to lose my retirement stake.  I was frozen with indecision!

I am a retired engineer with a PhD in mathematics.  So I thought  maybe I could devise a way to lower the risk of the stock market but still make a livable return.   I began searching the literature.

Amazing Discovery

It turns out that a fellow named Markowitz had found a solution over 50 years ago.  He made the amazing discovery that if you combined certain types of high risk assets (such as gold or commodities) with low risk assets (such as bonds and utilities), you could construct a portfolio that would give you a rate of return that exceeded that of the stock market but with substantially less risk.  His work was so revolutionary that he was awarded the Nobel Prize!  He called this strategy Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT).

So I implemented MPT in my own retirement accounts and since then, I have been able to sleep more soundly.

Step by Step Tutorials

I know that as a busy professional, you may have never had the time to learn the ins and outs of investing.  You may have relied on your broker or other professionals for advice, which is fine.   However, if you would like to learn more, this site provides a series of basic tutorials  that attempt to explain in plain English what all the Wall Street jargon really means.  The site also provides some more advanced article on how to construct a retirement portfolio to obtain more return with less risk and how to apply risk management techniques so that you can keep what you have earned.    I hope you will find these informative and I welcome your feedback.

Announcing Sleep Soundly Portfolio book series!

If you dont have time to read all the blog articles (there are hundreds) I have organized the most important information in a new Sleep Soundly Portfolio book series.  The first book, called appropriately Supercharge Retirement Income, will be published in December, 2014 and will be followed quickly by a second book on how to crash proof your portfolio by using some unique risk management techniques.

The cover of the first book is shown below.