For most long term investors, the term better investing doesn’t mean much, although it should.  The concept is to learn how to invest for yourself and your family, take ownership of your investments and fully understand where every penny you have is invested and why.

This applies to any scenario of either investing with a financial advisor or doing it yourself at a discount broker.

For those who wish to do the minimal amount of work, but maintain a level of safety and cost control, you can benefit from looking into Vanguard and utilizing their exchange traded funds or low cost index mutual funds.

This method for the somewhat lazy long term investor has worked relatively well, but won’t produce any rocket returns that other methods can provide.  By selecting a balanced approach between various asset classes, re-balancing at least once per year, you’ll basically perform close to the major market averages over time.

If you believe the market will always go up over time, then this low impact method would be suitable.  If you are more concerned that there are bear markets ahead that can replicate what happened in 2008, then don’t do this.

As our members know, we make money in both bull and bear markets.

The other lazy long term investor way to approach the market is to buy the brands.  If you take a look at the top 20 global brands such as IBM, Apple, Proctor & Gamble, Exxon, BP and so on, then at least you’ve taken the Buffet approach and over the long term, those entities should perform at least as good as the global economy, and also adapt to changing trends, keeping your investment growing along with it.

Again, this may not be the preferred way to maximize returns, but it at least gets you in the game.

Better Investing: What We Do, How We Do It

The session included a celebration of long-term investing success with a closer look at what we do, why we do it … and how we do it. Stocks discussed: ASPS, BRLI, FOSL and GNTX.