Investors need to do the same degree of comparison shopping they would normally do when choosing between funds, which means digging into things like expense ratios, historical performance and holdings.

The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.

Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it's about deliberately choosing to be different.

This case demonstrates that even experienced investors in hedge funds can be victims of unscrupulous operators.

I've long loved balanced funds, especially for skittish investors, because the bonds mask the volatility of the stocks. When I was doing financial planning, I saw that people often had a hard time keeping in mind the overall portfolio, and a balanced fund kind of forces them to do that.

When you're shopping for fish, ask the grocer if they're ocean caught or wild caught, and not farm raised.