Calm Your Selloff Fears With These Five ETFs

The email I get from readers indicates there's a keen interest in achieving returns that roughly equal the market but that take less risk and have an increased yield. The interest in this concept seems heightened now that the market has gone almost straight up for several months.

I believe there is a lot of value in exploring how to structure portfolios to create a desired effect. This can go a long way toward learning more about how capital markets work, which in turn can lead to better returns or, more specifically, better risk-adjusted returns.

Let me explain "risk-adjusted returns." Say the market goes up 10% in a year, and a given portfolio goes up only 8.5% in that same year -- but does so by taking on only half of the risk of the market. So that portfolio's result, while not market-beating at first blush, is actually a very good result. ...