Having now completed five years of quarterly rebalancing, this habit is well established and it feels natural. In fact, it only takes me a couple minutes to calculate the moves that I need to make and submit them to make it official. In this case, the movements were all less than 1% and hardly worth recounting here.
Although the market has not performed the way I expected, wanted, or planned (if it ever does, then it is merely a coincidence), I found it interesting that the amount my actively-managed large cap fund was up almost equaled the amount that my international index fund was down while my large cap index fund was up almost the same amount that the index bond fund was down. Even the amount that the high-yield bond fund was down was comparable to the amount the actively-managed mid cap fund was up. Instead of rebalancing this month, I could have been almost as well off by simply exchanging those amounts between the respective funds.
Outside of the 401(k), I have been amassing a slew of individual stocks. My approach there has been taking it as an educational approach. When I started investing in index funds, I had a strategy in mind based on what I had acquired from other people's experiences, but I felt truly knowledgeable after making it through my first market cycle. I expect the same case will be said for individual stock picks. Not many will be winners (as defined by outperforming the stock market) but I hope to be able to assess for myself what separated the ones that were winners from the ones that were not before I establish a true strategy.
So far, I have taken stock tips from The Motley Fool, from word of mouth, from Money CNN, and even from YouTube comments (of all places). If my quarterly updates start getting thin based on my rebalancing activity, I may take the opportunity to address these individual stocks as well.
