First, I want you to think about your retirement portfolio and make a contribution to the discussion based on the following questions:

• Is it easy or difficult to estimate the risk of your overall portfolio? Have you calculated the standard deviation of your investment portfolio?

• Without giving details of your exact allocation, do you own now more stocks than bonds? How frequently do you adjust (rebalance) your portfolio? If you were going to make some changes now, do you think you need to increase your allocation to bonds? Stocks? Riskier securities or safer ones?

• Do you buy stocks directly, or you invest in mutual funds? Index or active mutual funds? An index fund is a fund whose return depends on an index (i.e., S&P 500). An active fund's allocation is decided by a manager that decides what to buy or sell.

• Any exposure to international stocks and bonds?