What should be the risk tolerance for a 70 year old female investor?

I have to filled out a form for my broker. I am a 70 year old female & a retired school teacher. There are three categories, high risk, medium risk, & low risk, beside each I must place a percentage, obviously the three percentages must add up to 100%. I know high risk will be 0% but I am not sure about the other two categories. I am a very cautious and conservative investor who has be burned by the market in the past. I have only limited knowledge of investing. Please state if you are an investment professional and what your educational credentials are. Thanks!

The risk profile doesn't really mean anything - it is just info gathered for the SEC.

My suggestion would be to pick high risk then you won't get limited by options level. Doesn't matter if you never intend to trade options - why limit yourself ?

My other suggestion would be to go with Vanguard or Fidelity and even though you're 70 still keep 40-50% of your money in an S&P 500 mutual fund. (You'll beat the average stock mutual fund 80% of the time.) The rest you can put into bond funds and a little at least into international stock funds.

You have like a 50% chance of getting to 90 ... so don't get too conservative or inflation will eat away at your money.

If you need it ... you can have them send you a check every month from your interest and dividends.

If you have a large account like 7 digits then you might want to talk to a financial planner about giving away some of your money to relatives or to charity.

I'm assuming most of your money will be used to live on. Being conservative, you don't want a lot of risk, even 5 to 10 years out. A rough rule of thumb is 110-age=stock risk. You sound like you'd be comfortable with about 40-50% in the medium risk, the remaining 50-60% in the low risk. This will give you income, and some growth potential should you live longer.

[I work at a large pension fund doing asset allocation]

It depends entirely on your other income and spending. If you're a teacher, you could have opted for either a monthly pension check or a lump sum distribution. If its the latter, then you need an allocation that will provide a guaranteed income for the near term but still grow for the long term (something like the 40/60 equity/fixed income ratio discussed above).

If however, you have income coming in, and this is meant to augment that income, then you can be more aggressive. Same is true if your investing for the next generation.

It sounds like you need this invested amount to provide income near term. I would choose 15% low risk, to account for the next 3 years, 35% medium risk, to account for years 3-10 years, and 40% in high risk, to provide for the remainder.