• Investment performance is primarily determined by being in the right Asset Class or Index (94% of performance) of stocks rather than trying to pick the right individual stocks (only 4% of performance) or trying to time the market (only 2% of performance). 1

• Stock Picking and Market Timing do not work consistently because the market is efficient. Today’s communication and analytical systems are very rapid and efficient resulting in very skilled financial analysts immediately acting on all known information resulting in the price of any one stock or market reflecting all known information. SIMM focuses on picking the right asset classes of investments in the form of a mix of optimally chosen Vanguard Index Funds with no attempt to ever time the market.

• Modern Portfolio Theory won the Nobel Prize in Economic Science in 1990. The award winning concepts are 1) Risks can be diversified away by having asset classes/indexes of stocks in a portfolio that move in opposite directions, commonly called Dissimilar Price Movement Diversification, 2) If two portfolios have the same average return, the one with the lower volatility will have the greater compound return over time. Dissimilar Price Movement Diversification=Reduced Volatility. 2

• Large and small company stocks exhibit dissimilar price diversification as shown below. Green represents the high for the period and red represents the low. Note that most of the reds and greens occur in the very largest and smallest companies:

• 96% of all stock mutual funds did not beat the S&P 500 Index during the period 1984 to 1994. You can’t count on fund managers who actively manage their mutual funds to consistently beat the market indexes such as the S&P 500.

• The problem with most stock mutual funds is the turnover is too high (85% or higher), operating expenses are usually over 1% and there is a limited number of stocks/bonds resulting in less diversification and more volatility (ups and downs). SIMM uses Vanguard Index Funds which have very low turnover (16%), operating expenses in the portfolio are only .35% and the SIMM portfolios result in over 6,000 different stocks/bonds diversified worldwide with dissimilar price diversification.

• Investment return is enhanced by eliminating costly front-end and back-end loads, 12b-1 fees and other unnecessary commissions. Annual operating expenses should be held to a minimum to increase your overall return. We choose a wide variety of index funds that have the lowest operating expenses in the industry combined with no-loads.

1. "Determinants of Portfolio Performance," Brinson, Hood and Beebower, Financial Analysts Journal, July/August 1986 and again in May/June 1991.

2. "Efficient Portfolios, Modern Portfolio Theory," Markowitz, Harry, The Journal of Finance7, no. 1, March 1952, pp. 77-91.

3."Money Picks," Fried, Carla, Money Magazine, February 1995, pp. 62-63.

4. "How Funds Get Rich at Your Expense," Simon, Ruth, Money Magazine, February 1995, pp. 130-140.