This Month's Issue: Key Points

Our first article this month addresses an issue many of you have asked us about: What is the best way to withdrawal money from a portfolio? Should you sell your winners, sell your losers, or sell matched amounts? We reach two conclusions. First, the impact of a withdrawal strategy on the probability of achieving an investor's goals is much less than the impact of other decisions, such as asset allocation and rebalancing strategy. Second, we find that the impact of the withdrawal strategy increases with the size of the income target, length of the time horizon, and expected level of portfolio volatility.

Our second article analyzes the new Oil MacroShares ETFs issued by Claymore Securities and MacroMarkets LLC. We do not find a compelling case for treating oil MacroShares as a separate asset class. Rather, the "up" share is best seen as a way of tilting one's commodity exposure more towards oil (which you could also do by switching from a fund that tracks the Dow Jones AIG Commodity Index to one that tracks the more energy oriented Goldman Sachs Commodities Index). As for the "down" share, there are better ways - like equities - to profit from a fall in the price of oil. That being said, we are quite enthusiastic about the MacroShares concept, and suggest other ways it could be applied with greater potential benefits to investors.

Our product and strategy notes this month summarize a number of recently published research papers on various aspects of investing, and also examine the wave of new ETF products that have recently been introduced.

As for our portfolios, we now include the Equity Market Neutral Target portfolios with our monthly portfolio updates. These updates are found at the following link: http://www.indexinvestor.com/Members/YTDReturns/

| This Month's Issue: Key Points | This Month's Letters to the Editor: FT Articles: Commodity Index Funds' Future Contract Rollovers and VIX and Barclays' Water iShare | Global Asset Class Returns | Asset Class Valuation Update | Implementing Withdrawal and Savings Strategies | The Potential Benefits from MacroShares | Style Rotation With REITS | Product and Strategy Notes: Recent Research Reports and STILL more ETF Products | 2006-2007 Benchmark Portfolios - All Currencies |