It’s no secret that I think individual stocks have no place in most investors’ portfolios. I think most investors are far better served by a simple portfolio of low-cost index funds or ETFs.
That’s why I was intrigued to hear from Kathy Kristof (Contributing Editor at Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, a self-described “moderately lethargic investor,” and somebody who is perfectly well informed about the benefits of index funds) about an experiment she’s trying with her own money. She’s taking $200,000 of her own retirement portfolio, putting part of it into Vanguard’s Total Stock Market ETF and the rest into a portfolio of individual stocks that she’s put together.
She’s reporting her results in an ongoing column: Our Practical Investor’s Portfolio.
I wish her a successful combination of luck and/or skill.
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Hi. I'm Mike Piper, the author of this blog. I'm a CPA and the author of several personal finance books. The point of this blog is to show that investing doesn't have to be complicated. 
She’s putting her money where her mouth is!
I wish her good luck as well!
As you may remember Mike, I run some money actively, and the rest passively. (The exact amount varies with how I feel about the market — when it’s bearish I tend to get more active!)
I keep thinking of revealing my active trades but I am worried about the message it would send out to readers, even if I tried to communicate that I don’t think anyone needs to do it, that few should do it, and that even I only do it with a subset of my net worth.
She’ll get a lot of readers for this, but I wonder if she’ll make many richer!
Anyway, good luck to her.
Oh, and I look out for the Oblivious Investor Momentum Quant 4 Fund.
(p.s. I mean systematically reveal my trades / whole active portfolio. I absolutely do discuss the odd stock/fund now and then).