Portfolio Manager shows issues; Fund Advisor fixes them

Summary: A yearly portfolio review is supposed to bring peace of mind. It usually surfaces problems instead. Seeing what's wrong is not the same as knowing what to do about it and that gap is where most good intentions quietly die.

Summary: A yearly portfolio review is supposed to bring peace of mind. It usually surfaces problems instead. Seeing what's wrong is not the same as knowing what to do about it and that gap is where most good intentions quietly die. I have spent a good part of the last 25 years telling investors to look at their portfolios less often. The number that sits at the top of any portfolio screen, the one that tells you how much richer or poorer you became today, is there to hold your attention rather than to help you. And an investor who watches it move every day will sooner or later feel that he ought to do something about it. That is where a great deal of the damage in personal finance begins. The checks that genuinely improve how your money does are few, unexciting and annual: whether you are putting in enough and raising the amount each year, whether your mix of equity and fixed income has drifted away from what you first intended, and whether you are as diversified as you like to believe. Look at those once a year and let the rest wash past you. What I have come to notice, though, is a gap in that advice. A yearly look, done properly, does not leave you in peace; it hands you a set of problems. You find that your equity share has crept up to 85 per cent when you had decided on 65 per cent, that six of your 15 funds are r