But those who work for stock market laggards, such as Digital or Wang, probably don t feel as fortunate. And loading up on employer shares could backfire if your company s stock plunges into a prolonged downturn. Lack of diversification . And they rarely spread their choices across a broad spectrum of asset classes. The most common choices are typically a bond fund and a balanced fund, or a bond fund and an index fund.
Employees generally ignore investment options that are even a little out of the mainstream.
Emerging markets funds often attract much less than that. But plan administrators often finds it too expensive and cumbersome to offer more exotic options, such as a commodities or emerging markets fund, when few people are likely to choose them anyway. Once skimpy investment menus have fattened. While that may pale in comparison to the thousands of choices available to investors in IRAs or other non-employer retirement plans, it should be enough for most people to get the diversification they need. The selection of investment choices varies widely from company to company.