Looking for someone to tell me what's wrong or right about this picture.
I recently used this "Morningstar X-Ray Analysis" feature on holdings across several institutions. Looking at top 90% of total investment, it shows me this:
Percent Category YTD Return % of Tot
41 Cash 9 Large Blend 6 9 Large Growth 7 8 Foreign Large Growth 9 7 Intermediate-Term Bond 2 4 Large Growth 7 4 Large Value 7 4 Large Value 7 2 Europe Stock 11 2 Large Blend 8
The cash is all in regular money market and CD's earning 5% interest, the rest is all mutual funds in IRA's (about 15% Roth, 85% traditional).
Suppose for the next year the idea is to maintain roughly the status quo, although the cash percent could go down to maybe 35% and overall risk (growth potential) could go up a little. Tax bracket is currently
15% federal. Planning to convert maybe 5% of traditional IRA total to Roth IRA this year as long as it doesn't increase tax bracket.
Is there any obvious way to juggle things around to reduce expenses or increase tax benefits?
Would purchasing ETF's with either the cash or from within the IRA's (by selling mutual funds) have any particular advantage?
For example, if there is going to be so much cash earning taxable interest, is there any point in also have money in a Trad. IRA bond fund?
Does it cost more to have multiple funds in each category (for example, two "Large Blend", two "Large Growth", two "Large Value"?
It says avg. mutual fund expense ratio is 0.69, then "expense ratio of similarly weighted hypothetical portfolio" is 1.35. What does this mean?
TIA!