I am a senior citizen and I invested $5,000 divided equally between in Janus' Global Life Science and Olympus funds. Now my $5,000 is down to only $2,800. Should I my dump these funds? Should I switch to another Janus fund? Or should I just sweat it out? I have other investments besides these two funds.

Paul's Answer:

If only life were so simple that with just a couple of facts, somebody could tell you how to make a complex decision!

The short answer - and it's the right answer - is that you should follow your investment plan and do whatever that plan dictates. But if you had such a plan, you of course would not have to ask me what to do.

If you are a buy-and-hold investor and you have designed your portfolio so that the total volatility is within your risk tolerance, then you should just hang on.

If your plan calls for selling funds when you are disappointed with their short-term performance, then you should sell. However, if that is your plan, then you are in great danger of gradually losing more and more of your money because you are always going to be able to find some reason to be disappointed with the performance of some part of your portfolio.

The right answer to your question depends on a number of things that I don't know. These include why you bought these funds, what else you have in your portfolio, what your risk tolerance is, how old you are, how much money you have and what would happen to your lifestyle or your future plans if you lost ALL the money that is in those two funds.

In general, I would not recommend those two Janus funds for a senior citizen unless they were going to be less than 5 percent of a total portfolio that is very well balanced. And I wouldn't recommend them unless that senior citizen was comfortable with the thought of losing half of his or her money in those two funds. This does not sound like you.