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Please visit Phil's web site www.HardWorkingMoney.com for his latest investing insights.

National 401(k) Day is an annual event promoted by the Profit-Sharing Council of America to highlight the importance of employer-sponsored retirement savings plans. It’s celebrated on the first Friday after Labor Day to remind people that retirement closely follows work.

Unfortunately, the market of the last decade has provided investors with little reason to celebrate – unless you were smart enough to focus on diversification and employ a systematic rebalancing program. Those smart investors, however, appear to be few and far between. A recent UCLA study found that only 7% of 401(k) investors described themselves as “aggressive” investors; yet 33% of them employed very aggressive asset allocation strategies by putting 80% or more of their account balance into stocks. At the Vanguard Group, 16% of 401(k) participants had every single dollar invested in stocks at the end of 2008; and, even more scary, Fidelity reports that 14% of 401(k) investors between the ages of 60 and 64 are 100% allocated to stocks. These folks were sitting ducks in 2007 and 2008 – and they remain so today.

The most telling statistic of all is that only 16% of 401(k) investors made any trades in 2008 – i.e., 84% of investors watched idly (and probably in shock) as their account values plummeted.

Use National 401(k) Day as an opportunity to review your asset allocation strategy and make changes where necessary. Remember, it’s your money so make sure it’s working as hard as you did to earn it.

As an investment advisor, I get a lot of finance-related email offerings. And I'm frequently struck by the audacity - and absurdity - of these communications. Here's an example.

Just yesterday I received an email promoting a "Complimentary 2009 Market Forecast." I was told that "Forecast 2009 clearly shows when a nice rally - and a major, major - decline comes in 2009 for the Stock Market." In addition, the author of Forecast 2009 "also expects a surprise sell-off in Gold and then a significant buy point, as well as a massive move in the Bond market." And in a final burst of unbridled bravado, the author explained that "My forecasts are road maps of the future, about as close as you can get to having next month's newspaper, today." In closing, he offered me the opportunity to "Know Today, what will happen in 2009."

What nonsense. The scary thing is that you couldn't make this stuff up. These are verbatim quotes from some self-proclaimed stock market Einstein who - despite being worth trillions, presumably, by having followed his own prescient advice - runs his own website that looks like it was designed by an eight-year-old and features no less than five photos of this God-like forecaster.

Don't fall for this kind of idiotic prognostication. Learn about investing the old-fashioned way by studying the markets, assessing your own needs and tolerance for risk, and developing a long-term strategy. Market timers like this jerk almost never make money - if they did, they wouldn't be spamming the likes of me and you. Yes, 2008 was an extremely difficult and painful year for investors - and no one knows what 2009 holds for us. Just stay focused, stay on strategy, and don't try to make up for last year's losses all at once. And above all, don't fall for the get-rich-quick nonsense of spam emails and television infomercials.

The press has been full of reports of Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme in which he stole some $50 billion from his clients. Madoff's arrogance and callous disregard for the fortunes of the charitable foundations, private banks, and wealthy friends for whom he managed money is the stuff of legends.

The sad part is that Madoff did not and could not succeed on his own. He succeeded in his criminal endeavors because of the blind trust and naivete of his clients. No financial advisor - regardless of reputation or charm - deserves blind trust. And every client - regardless of wealth or sophistication — deserves a full and UNDERSTANDABLE accounting of how their investments have performed. In the case of Madoff, it seems that most of his clients followed the "don't look a gift horse in the mouth" phiolosophy and were delighted with the paper returns they were shown even if they had no idea how those returns were achieved. They would have been better served by adhering to the adage "if something looks too good to be true, it probably is."

Hindsight, of course, is 20-20; but every investor can learn from this scandal by following some simple guidelines:

• Know who serves as the custodian for your account. For 401(k) plans this is typically the plan provider (e.g., Hartford, Fidelity, or ADP) and for brokerage accounts it is a specific broker-dealer like Charles Schwab, Fidelity, or Merrill Lynch.
• Make sure you receive quarterly statements from the custodian detailing all activity within your account. You advisor may supplement these reports with additional information, but the custodian reports are the foundation.
• Never write a check to or deposit money into an entity other than the custodian — i.e., never write a check to your financial advisor for funds that you want to invest. (The only exception to this rule is if you are paying a fee to the advisor — i.e., fees that are charged for a service and are not being deposited in your account.)
• If you don't understand your quarterly statements and your advisor can’t explain the activity, get a third-party to review them.

There are people like Madoff in every industry, but the arcane goings-on of the investment world probably make it easier for his type of greedy charlatan to succeed. You can prevent yourself from falling victim to this type of scam by keeping your eyes and ears open and asking a lot of questions. You worked hard to earn your money, and your advisor should work just as hard. And he or she should work the old-fashioned way with insight and analysis - not with smoke and mirrors.

We humans have a strong fascination with the macabre. That's why we experience traffic jams as people slow down and rubber-neck to observe the details of a car crash or the identity of a speeding ticket recipient. The same thing is happening today with the stock market. People who wouldn’t recognize a credit default swap if it hit them in the head are nonetheless glued to CNBC, mesmerized by every uptick and downtick of the stock market.

As your friend, adviser, or anonymous blogger, I urge you to not fall into this trap. Obsessive market fixation is bad for your health, a waste of time, and totally unnecessary. Unless your invested capital is needed in the next year or so – in which case you shouldn't be investing in stocks – all you've experienced is a paper loss. Admittedly, it's a paper loss of painful proportions – but if you're investing for the long term, you don’t need to flinch with the market's over-reaction to every bit of positive or negative news. It's all very confusing. When oil prices go up, it's bad news. When oil prices go down, it's bad news. When Congress doesn't pass the bailout package, it's bad news; and when they do pass it, that's also bad news.

Today's market is a puzzle wrapped in an enigma with a large conundrum thrown into the mix. It's a puzzle that will be solved over time, and no amount of consternation on your part will make it happen any sooner.