Despite Flo's excitement that headline is misleading. In posts that talk about stock picking versus all fund portfolios versus some combination of the two, comments get left opining that stock picking is difficult or risky or whatever. So for the fund investor who goes narrower than an SPY, EFA, AGG mix could they spend the time and do the work to own three stocks from themes that were especially compelling to them for which there was no sector or country product? Sticking with three narrow themes for which I have no exposure, let's say an investor believes Cyprus (oh yeah, there's a stock market there) is the place to be, well for that person there is only one choice (that I know of); The Bank Of Cyprus (BCYPF) and it has been a pretty good proxy for the General Index of Cyprus ...