Portfolio Diversification: How to diversify your portfolio!

What is Portfolio Diversification

Portfolio Diversification: A farmer is advised not to put all his eggs in one basket: if he stumbled while returning the basket of eggs from the henhouse, he would have a messy situation on his hands. A person shouldn’t risk all their money on a single investment in agriculture; these words of wisdom perfectly illustrate that principle.

Diversifying their portfolio will help investors reduce their risk of losing their nest egg. You can quickly diversify your investments by following these three tips.

Importance of portfolio diversification

An investor’s risk profile can be reduced by diversifying their investments. Investment diversification includes holding stocks in several different industries, countries, and risk profiles, in addition to holding bonds, commodities, and real estate. An investor is less likely to lose capital permanently and their portfolio’s volatility will be reduced by these assets. As a result, investors tend to earn lower returns from diversified portfolios than if they picked a single winning stock. 

What goes into a diversified portfolio? 

The investments in a diversified portfolio should be diverse. Historically, many financial advisors advised investors to build a 60/40 portfolio, by making 60% of their capital a stock and 40% a fixed-income investment. However, some argue that young investors should be exposed to more stocks.  

Diversifying your portfolio with a range of stocks is one of the keys to achieving diversification. Mixing tech, energy, and health care stocks with other sectors for diversification. Investments should be diversified into several high-quality sectors rather than being exposed to every industry. Aside from large- and small-cap stocks, dividend stocks, growth stocks, value stocks should also be considered by investors. 

Investors are wise to hold non-correlated investments in addition to diversified stock portfolios (i.e., those with prices that do not fluctuate with stock market indexes). Other diversification options include gold, gold certificates of deposit, gold, digital currency, and real estate investment.

3 tips for build and achieve Portfolio Diversification

Due to the vast array of investment options, building a diversified portfolio can seem daunting. The following three tips will help beginners to diversify their portfolios.  

1. Make sure to own at least 10-15 stocks across different industries (or invest in index funds).

By investing in several stocks, you can quickly build up a diversified portfolio. Owning at least 10 to 15 different companies is a good rule of thumb.

The diversity of their industries is also vital. There may be a temptation to invest in shares of a dozen well-known tech giants and call it a day, but that’s not proper diversification. The shares of all those companies could fall if tech spending were to drop due to a slowdown in the economy or new regulation. Investors should therefore consider investing in multiple industries because of that.

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Those without time to research stocks can purchase an index fund, which is a quick way to do that. For instance, an index fund designed to track the performance of the S&P 500 will aim to match it. Investing in index funds eliminates much of the guesswork and provides instant diversification. You would purchase shares of an index fund like the S&P 500 to gain exposure to 500 of the largest U.S. companies.

The expense ratios — also known as costs — of index funds are very low. Unlike fund managers, index funds don’t charge you for their expertise in handpicking investments.

2. Fixed Income

Portfolio Diversification also involves investing a portion of your capital in fixed-income assets like bonds. In addition to reducing overall returns, it will also decrease the overall risk profile and volatility of a portfolio. The following graph shows some historical returns on several portfolio allocation models

It is true that adding some bonds lowers a portfolio’s average annual rate of return, but it reduces the number of losses in the worst year and mutes the loss in the worst year.

There is an easier way to gain fixed-income exposure than choosing stocks, even though picking bonds can be more difficult. There are various ways to invest in bonds such as buying exchange-traded funds (ETFs). 

3. Real estate 

For investors who want to diversify their portfolios further, real estate is a good choice. Portfolios with real estate have traditionally earned higher returns while exhibiting less volatility.

It is easy to invest in income-producing commercial real estate through real estate investment trusts (REITs), which own residential properties. They have historically proven to be reliable investments. The FTSE Nareit All Equity REIT Index, as measured by the FTSE Nareit All Equity REIT Index, overperformed the S&P 500 in 15 of the 25 years ending in 2019. Reit returns averaged 10.9% per year.

Studies show that an optimal portfolio comprises 5% to 15% of real estate investment trusts. Portfolios containing 55% stocks, 35% bonds, and 10% REITs, for example, have historically outperformed portfolios containing 60% stocks/40% bonds with only slightly more volatility, while a portfolio containing 80% stocks/20% bonds has had less volatility. 

Conclusion

Trading off is a part of Portfolio Diversification. The Portfolio Diversification strategy reduces the risk associated with investing in one stock, one industry, or one investment option. The risk of a bad outcome may be reduced, but it could also cut into the investor’s potential return. It is therefore important to diversify. Alternatively, they risk ruining their chances of growing their nest egg so they can enjoy their golden years without taking a big risk.