(PUB) Investing 2015

•

Fund Family Shareholder Association

www.adviseronline.com

Daniel P. Wiener

is America’s leading expert on

the Vanguard family of funds. He is founder of

the Fund Family Shareholder Association and

chairman and chief executive officer of Adviser

Investments, LLC, a Newton, Massachusetts,

investment advisory firm (800-492-6868). As

editor of

The Independent Adviser for Vanguard Investors

, he is

a five-time recipient of the Newsletter Publishers Foundation’s

Editorial Excellence Award. He also edits the annual

Independent Guide to the Vanguard Funds.

Mr. Wiener is often

quoted in the nation’s leading financial publications.

Jeffrey D. DeMaso,

Editor/Director of

Research, works directly with Dan Wiener

researching and writing the multiple-award

winning

Independent Adviser for Vanguard

Investors

newsletter. He also leads the analyst

team for Adviser Investments, LLC. Jeff gradu-

ated

magna cum laude

from Tufts University with a B.A. in

economics, holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation

and is a member of the CFA Institute and the Boston Security

Analysts Society.

DAN’S DO-IT-NOW ACTION RECOMMENDATIONS

Saving early for retirement is just common sense to most adults. But parents and grandparents

can also give their teens an investing lesson and a retirement head start. (See page 1)

Our flight to safety instinct is strong, but stick with long-term winners like

Dividend Growth

and

Health Care

. (See page 12)

U.S. stocks and the dollar have outpaced their foreign peers for the past several years—that’s

why now is an opportune time to boost our foreign stock holdings. (See page 3)

The Ultimate

Fund Guide

WITHOUT TURNING ON A COMPUTER,

without even looking up a telephone number,

you can have at your fingertips all the data

on your favorite Vanguard funds—with the

new FFSA

2015 Independent Guide to

the Vanguard Funds

. This year, the 25th

Anniversy Edition, we have more data than

ever, plus new Vanguard funds, updated risk

analysis, top holdings, etc.

Even with our huge computer files and access

to fund managers, Research Director Jeff

DeMaso and I still find ourselves thumbing

through the annual guide to find that quick

statistic, a current redemption fee number, or

even a total return figure for 2005.

Best of all, the

2015 Guide

is available both

in print and online, with a user-friendly inter-

face for easier reading, searching and quick-

reference access to the glossary, index, and

table of contents.

2015 Guide

is a great resource for

me, and for you. Call Customer Service at

800/211-7641 for all the details on how to

purchase the guide.

25th Anniversary Edition!

multinationals, the dollar’s strength

will have impinged on their ability to

generate profit growth. In addition, many

of those same top-dog multinationals

are oil companies, and you know what’s

happened to the price of oil. That isn’t

going to help earnings, either. Add in

a touch of winter weather, which from

all reports seemed to hit the economy

particularly hard in February, and you’ve

got all the makings for an excuse-laden

reporting season. Instead of focusing on

results over the months just past, corpo-

rate managers’ projections will provide

better clues about what lies ahead.

But also remember that you and I don’t

buy the index, and hence, we aren’t nec-

essarily buying shares of companies that

are mired in mediocrity. Managers like

Donald Kilbridge at

Dividend Growth

the team at PRIMECAP Management,

and Mark Giambrone and Jim Barrow at

Selected Value

are making choices about

where they put our money, rather than

simply buying the entire market. That’s

been a winning formula for us for years.

On another front, if by some chance

you own

U.S. Growth

or its annuity

counterpart,

Growth Annuity

(funds

that I do not recommend and I hope you

sold off long ago), then you own a piece

of the massively valued, overhyped

and controversial ride-sharing com-

pany, Uber Technologies. Wellington

Management’s Andrew Shilling bought

some $20 million in Uber in U.S.

Growth during the latter half of 2014.

Given the fact that the company’s valua-

tion jumped from $17 billion to $40 bil-

lion when it raised money in December,

that Uber position has now grown to

$46.9 million at year-end, making Uber

the fund’s 36th largest holding—on par,

for instance, with positions in Electronic

Arts and Kinder Morgan, and larger than

Lowe’s, Yelp or Salesforce. U.S. Growth

owns other non-public tech companies

including WeWork and Cloudera. While

these tech high-flyers could pay off if

valuations keep rising, there’s also a

strong chance the companies soar at

their initial public offerings and then

dive before early investors have the right

to sell. U.S. Growth is one of the funds

Vanguard used to use as a go-to for the

active component of its 401(k) plan

offerings. Today, it doesn’t even get the

“Select” label.

Speaking of launches, Vanguard’s

new

Tax-Exempt Bond Index

and its

ETF shares should launch around April

20. I wouldn’t buy it right away, but

would let assets accumulate first. Plus,

with a 0.50% front-end load, it will be

the ETF share class that will gather the

bulk of this fund’s assets.