rebalancing

Determining your risk tolerance before you invest is a lot like choosing a delivery plan for the birth of your child. When the contractions start, even the best-laid plans can go right out the window, because it's impossible to predict how you'll feel watching a chunk of your savings evaporate until it happens.

After the Great Recession and with volatile stock markets and unemployment keeping Americans jittery, more people are ready to commit to improving their personal financial situation in 2011. Here are a dozen steps that can help put you on the road to fiscal security.

On Friday, after the market closes, the Russell Investment Group will announce how it will rebalance its indexes in the annual event known as the Russell Reconstitution, the ripple effects of which will be felt as a brief, high-energy tremor through the stock markets.

Many buy-and-hold investors who took losses during the 2008 market crash are looking for proactive ways to prevent a repeat of that ordeal. A new method of tactical investing may help.

After surviving the Dow Jones Industrial average's bone-jarring drop below 7,000 and its whipsaw recovery to levels above 10,000, many investors' portfolios may no longer be positioned to meet retirement and other life goals. And as we begin a new year, now may be the time for investors to reassess...