satori:

Santa Cruz:

snip...more from the same place:

As regards my MALE EGO, the professors noted that "People are overconfident in their own abilities, and investors and analysts are particularly overconfident in areas where they have some knowledge. However, increasing levels of confidence frequently show no correlation with greater success. For instance, studies show that

MEN CONSISTENTLY OVERESTIMATE THEIR OWN ABILITIES IN MANY AREAS INCLUDING ATHLETIC SKILLS, ABILITIES AS A LEADER, AND ABILITY TO GET ALONG WITH OTHERS.

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Hi Santa Cruz: Yes, well ego and bravado  (male or female) is not the thing that should drive our investments. I'm sure we'd ALL agree. That would be pretty detrimental to our pocketbook.  That's why each of us has to decide for ourselves how much (if anything) we're willing and able and need to risk for the projected (hoped for) return.  That is an entirely individual decision that needs to be justified to no one. And determining risk is a tricky thing that I don't fully understand, but here are some examples that may seem paradoxical. Example: someone with $2.5 has the ability to take risk, but may have little need to take risk if the goal is have a more than decent retirement and pass on something to the kids.   S/he may be able to afford to stick the whole $2.5M in money market and be just fine.   Someone with $300k saved and 10 years to retirement with no pension is going to have to find a way to make the $300k grow by saving (hopefully with some tax deferred accounts) and investing. That person is actually taking a risk by not investing. (  If say at retirement a person needs to withdraw $40,000 per year from investments (edit: for 30 years)  at 4% of the portfolio.  Then the portfolio has to be $1M (I wish I could find a citation for this, but I think that's about right).  The issue then is not whether a person is more or less confident than s/he needs to be.  It's whether a mix of bonds and stock and cash can get the person to his/her investment goal (what s/he needs to have to retire for 30 years, buy a yacht, tour the world, whatever...) and, whether, s/he can weather a given projected maximum loss of X to the portfolio -- that is can the investor afford for the portfolio to go down 10, 20, 25% and so on  in the short term to get the reward of say 10.7% in ten years.  Some people like yourself (if I understand the portfolio you listed), keep the majority of assets very safe in bonds or MM and have a small portion in stock -- risky or otherwise, traded or otherwise  (sorry, I don't know what Profund is).   IMO, that's totally fine if it works for you, if you're comfortable with it and it serves your purpose. Not an expert by any stretch of the imagination. If the spirit ever moves you to have someone look over  your portfolio you can go to the Boglehead's forum to find out how to list things and then come back here and post or post there.  http://diehards.org/forum/index.php   ~Satori (off to get some exercise. I'm becoming an Internet potato.)

  Some people like yourself (if I understand the portfolio you listed), keep the majority of assets very safe in bonds or MM and have a small portion
in stock -- risky or otherwise, traded or otherwise  (sorry, I don't know what Profund is).

from the middle of 2003 till now never less then 37% cash(vmmxx)

Profunds here

 the 2 I had

short real estate 

Ultra short small cap 

Vanguard funds I have used:

VWEHX

VAAPX

VGPMX

VEXPX