As an investor, when you pay an investment advisor either a fee or a commission to manage your retirement or brokerage portfolio, don't waste your time and money by allowing your paid advisor to invest in diversified mutual funds, especially with an often overused "buy and hold" strategy.
First, when it comes to stock investing, diversified stock mutual funds are funds that invest in stocks representing a variety of sectors of the economy, the logic being that when one sector is lagging, another sector will flourish.
This is a flawed logic. A competent money manager would have you invested primarily in sectors of the economy (and global regions) that are doing well, while avoiding the weak declining sectors and global regions.
Which begs the question: if you are going to invest in a diversified stock mutual fund that does not require more sophisticated selection strategy, why pay a fee or commission for diversified mutual fund advice? You alone can invest in a diversified, no-load Standard and Poor 500 index (SPY) or the Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) and generally get the same results.
Another advantage of competent sector or world region investing is that the performance of sector funds can generate roughly 75% of the gains of individual stocks with only 50% of the risk.
Hence, one of the best ways to invest in sector mutual funds are with ETFs or sector portfolios of the Fidelity no-load family of funds. Electronically- traded mutual funds (ETFs), available through any discount brokerage firm, offers hundreds of ways to invest in sector funds - and can be bought and sold like stocks.
The same goes for international investing. Why invest in a internationally-diversified stock mutual fund (which may include owning stock of companies from all global regions) when the regions of Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America are the fastest growing consumer economies?
If an investor wants to invest in the lower volatility international regions, stick to a Europe and Japan index fund. Moreover, your best discount brokerage firms, including Fidelity, offer dozens of ETFs that are specific to the fastest growing global regions or countries.
In the end, lazy investment advisors and unsophisticated individual investors invest money in diversified mutual funds because they don't want to do the work necessary to identify the best performing sectors of the U.S. economy or the fastest growing regions or countries of the world.
When it comes to paying for investment advice, the falsely defined strategy of "diversification" more often than not is an outdated investment concept.
When paying for investment advice, you want to go for a win-win investment strategy.