5 Decisions Every Investor Must Make

Living a Financial Expert's Legacy

Dan Goldie Gordon Murray

When Gordon Murray learned he had inoperable brain cancer, he didn’t take a vacation or try skydiving. Instead, the retired Wall Street investment banker wanted to spend his remaining months writing a book to share what he had learned with others.

Last June, Murray teamed with his friend and financial advisor Dan Goldie, and together they self-published The Investment Answer. Murray, who passed away in January, lived to see the book get publicity and a publisher. And become a best-seller.

“This book was not designed to do anything other than educate people, and it just happened to take off,” Goldie says. “It is his legacy. And it’s my privilege to carry on that legacy.”

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In concise, easy-to-understand language, Goldie and Murray lay out the basics of investing, and offer advice on making five critical decisions:

1 The Do-It-Yourself Decision: Are you going to invest on your own, or are you going to seek help from a financial professional? And what type of advisor is best?

2 The Asset-Allocation Decision: How should you allocate your investments?

3 The Diversification Decision: Which specific asset classes should you include in your portfolio?

4 The Active-Versus-Passive Decision: Will you favor an actively managed approach to investing, or a more passive approach?

5 The Rebalancing Decision: When should you sell certain assets in your portfolio, and when should you buy more?

“There’s a lot of misinformation and noise out there, and it’s difficult to be able to assimilate all the important and necessary information and separate that from what’s really important and necessary,” Goldie says. The key points of The Investment Answer teach investors what it really means to diversify and how to maintain control of your asset allocation. And perhaps most important, readers learn why taking a passive approach can yield higher returns over time. After all, a better ROI is what every investor wants to achieve.