Don't Let the Label Lead You Astray

Perhaps one of the greatest contributions of ETFs over the last several years is simplicity. The surge in popularity of exchange-traded products has dramatically simplified the business of investing, making it easy for individuals to achieve access to asset classes and strategies that were once beyond their grasp. It's now possible even for amateur investors to build a cheap, diversified, low-maintenance portfolio with only a handful of ETFs.

But sometimes, the level of simplicity offered by ETFs is misleading. When building a long-term, buy-and-hold portfolio, it's often tempting to use "global" ETFs as building blocks that offer one-stop exposure to the world stock and bond markets, instead of taking a piecemeal approach that involves cobbling together various regions of the world in customized weightings....461 more words left in this article. To read them, just click below and try Real Money FREE for 14 days.

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