Invest Like A Turtle?

I stumbled across a blog called Money Turtle. It is written by an anonymous GenXer in Boston and focuses, he says, on life sciences investing. It seems to me that he covers more ground than that however. His posts seem short (in a good way), easy to read and impart a knowledge of the subject. You can decide for yourself whether the site offers an utility or not.

The reason for the post is how brilliant the blog's name is, I assume it is a play on the tortoise and the hare. We all know that slow and steady won that race. I think slow and steady wins the investment race too, assuming you have saved properly.

This speaks to the idea of capturing most of the market with less volatility that I have written about previously and which I think is very important. While I am not a behavioral finance expert there are many studies that show the pain from losses has greater impact than the joy of gains. This makes a compelling case for less volatility in your portfolio.

When I think of investing like a turtle I think of dividends. If it were possible to get a 6% yield with only 3%-4% of price appreciation in most years I think I might take it (here I am talking about my own portfolio). While is not a realistic combo it makes the point and I do think 3%-4% in yield is close to happening with some of the 5% yielders out there or on the way.

Two years from now I think it will be possible to build a diversified portfolio of a dozen ETFs with a lot of yield and a standard deviation of maybe 2/3 of the broad market to create the turtle effect I am talking about. Further, investors who are so inclined could then layer in a few narrow themes (stocks, funds, whatever) to add a little more growth potential.

I think this is huge for do-it-yourselfers I just hope there are more than a couple of people exploring this.