More ETF news, and Ben Stein's retirement picks

With talk about ETFs, I want to share Ben Stein's article. Just b/c I enjoy his retirement advice.

The article: http://finance.yahoo.com/columnist/article/yourlife/19423

His recommended portfolio.

30%	VTI	Total Market Fund
25%	EFA	Foreign Industrial Powers (the Dollar will decline)
10%	EEM	Emerging Markets
10%	ICF	REITs
10%	IWN	Small Caps
15%		Cash

Note. He mentions that the EFA investment should only be made to that extent if you have a long investment time line.

My thoughts on ETFs

I am wary of EEM and would chose a different route into the emerging markets. Also, I'm not really sure I want approximately 10% exposure to Russia in the emerging market sector of my portfolio. I would choose a different combination of more focused ETFs like Brazil MSCI Index (EWZ) Latin America 40 Index (ILF) and BLDRS Asia 50 ADR Inex (ADRA) I want to look for more exposure to India as well, haven't found that vehicle yet.

I think (especially for long term) that there is need for energy to be more heavily represented. I don't see us developing alternative fuels any time soon. Plus energy stocks appear to be at a relative S-T low. Look at iShares S&P Global Energy (IXC). It is well diversified globally, hey it's oil.

Lastly, I haven't researched this to it's fullest yet, but there is another way into the S&P 500 investment that I want to examine. As you may know, the most popular funds tracking the S&P are based on market capitalization (share price X number of shares). So, those equities with the largest market caps are more heavily represented in the index. Another vehicle, the S&P Equal Weight Fund (RSP), equally weights the 500 stocks represented to prevent your money from being sucked into the fad of the moment, be it hot or cold stocks. This can help or hurt you, but since its inception in about 4 years ago it has outperformed the conventional S&P by about 30%. We'll see how it does in the future. I might just split my S&P exposure down the middle, with half in the conventional and half in RSP. As I said, I'm not sure about this one yet, but it is worth looking at this concept in your investing.