Investors: Time to start a wish list?

Make a wish list: stocks or mutual funds you wouldn’t be averse to buying, gradually, when the stock market finally stabilizes. That was the advice of Marylou Reeves, a certified financial planner in Rockaway, N.J., at a retirement forum last week arranged by Rutgers University.

“You think that at age 70 you don’t need stocks?” she told the audience. “Even though it’s a very frightening time, everyone needs stocks for their wealth to grow. You can have too much in bonds. If you were originally 70 percent in bonds and now you’re 85 percent, you should start rebalancing—bringing your portfolio back to 70-30.”

While not recommending any particular investment, she mentioned that certain blue-chip stocks are yielding around 7 percent.

Stocks in the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average that were yielding more than 6 percent at the end of last week were:                  

    Pfizer (PFE), 7.59%
    General Electric (GE), 6.57%
    Bank of America (BAC), 6.25%
    Verizon (VZ), 6.12%
    Alcoa (AA), 6.08%

--Warren Boroson

Guest contributor Warren Boroson is the author of more than 20 books, including “How to Pick Stocks Like Warren Buffett” (J.K. Lasser).