Roth 2011

January is time to think about where to put my Roth IRA contribution. Last year, I split the contribution between Fidelity Contrafund and Vanguard Total International Stock Index. Previously I had done well with small caps and emerging markets so I was afraid they wouldn’t hold up. But actually those continued to do well (two different small cap funds were up 25% and 27% and an emerging market fund was up 20%) while large caps lagged (Contrafund earned 16%) and international stocks were troubled by Europe and the continuing recession (up 10%). Still, overall 2010 was a pretty decent year and just about everything did pretty well. I was thinking about looking for some mutual funds that lagged and therefore might do better next year, but I couldn’t really find anything that did that poorly. Japan has done really poorly for a long time, so I thought about putting money there, thinking they might be insulated from US and European economic troubles. I didn’t want to load up any more on small cap stocks, so in the end I put the whole thing into Vanguard Total International Stock Index again. Hopefully it will work this time.

One thought on “Roth 2011”

  1. You might want to consider going with USAA. I transferred by IRA to 3 funds:

    USAA S&P 500 Index Fund

    USAA Extended Market Index Fund

    USAA International Fund

    Most of it went to S&P 500, with a close 2nd to International, and just a minimum to the Index Fund.

    If you are interested, I could let you know who helped me.

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