Taking Investment Advice from the Federal Reserve

Unless you’ve just woken up from a week-long coma, you already know that Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, announced the Fed is going to maintain its Zero-Interest Rate Policy for the next 2-3 years. It is also going to buy $500 billion worth of mortgages every year until the economy improves.

One opponent of this measure was president and CEO of the Dallas Federal Reserve, Richard Fisher. Fisher maintains that buying bonds probably won’t help stimulate the economy. Instead, it will however increase inflation, and expectations of inflation.

As one of the richest members of the Fed, we should probably listen to him. Worth an estimated $21 million, Fisher has worked as a Banker and a Hedge Fund Manager. And he’s been voicing inflation concerns since 2005.

While opposing the Fed’s stance on bond purchases, his personal portfolio is well positioned to benefit from any inflation that might occur due to it.

Fisher owns about $1 million worth of gold in the form of the gold ETF (GLD), $250,000 in uranium, and over 7,000 acres of land in the Mid-West.

In a prior post, I mentioned that everyone’s portfolio deserves an allocation to gold. As a percentage of his portfolio, Fisher’s allocation to gold is sitting at about 5%. In addition to gold, real estate is also inflation hedges. (While I wouldn’t necessarily recommend uranium as an inflation hedge, it is a commodity and thus being somewhat uncorrelated to either stocks or bonds, would provide some value in a portfolio).

So he’s definitely set up his investments to benefit from inflation.

What else does he own? Several million in Texas Municipal Bonds – earning him tax-free interest on his money. And a lot of blue-chip stocks like Eli Lily and Du Pont along with MLPs like Magellan Midstream Partners. You can check out the entire list here.

Nothing like a well-balanced portfolio to live out your retirement years in case your cushy government pension runs out!