Owning a variety of asset classes means that some part of your portfolio will be doing well when the cyclical turmoil arises. A broadly diversified portfolio includes large capitalization stocks, small cap, emerging markets, fixed income, real estate and commodities.
Many novice real estate investors soon quit the profession and invest in a well-diversified portfolio of bonds. That's because, when you invest in real estate, you often see a side of humanity that stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and saving money shelter you from.
The most important thing you can have is a good strategic asset allocation mix. So, what the investor needs to do is have a balanced, structured portfolio – a portfolio that does well in different environments…. we don't know that we're going to win. We have to have diversified bets.
In the long run, a portfolio of well chosen stocks and/or equity mutual funds will always outperform a portfolio of bonds or a money-market account. In the long run, a portfolio of poorly chosen stocks won't outperform the money left under the mattress.
One should have a wide variety of assets in one's portfolio. And oil, by the way, is a particularly important asset to have in one's portfolio because we need it, and the economy thrives on it.
You've always got to think about having some fixed income in your portfolio as well as equities.
If the investor doesn't have enough time and skill to investigate individual stocks or enough money to diversify a portfolio, the right thing to do is to invest in exchange-traded funds that give you exposure to asset classes. It does make sense for the individual investor to think in terms of holding individual asset classes.
If you hope to have more money tomorrow than you have today, you've got to put a chunk of your assets into stocks. Sooner or later, a portfolio of stocks or stock mutual funds will turn out to be a lot more valuable than a portfolio of bonds or CDs or money-market funds.
Credit expansion and money printing hasn't filtered much to ordinary people. It's boosted asset markets, real estate and stocks. So well-to-do-people have done very well.
Children should be taught in school that you should have all kinds of asset classes in your portfolio. They should be taught what those asset classes are, and their advantages and disadvantages.
The moment you make passive income and portfolio income a part of your life, your life will change. Those words will become flesh.
In investing, you get what you don't pay for. Costs matter. So intelligent investors will use low-cost index funds to build a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds, and they will stay the course. And they won't be foolish enough to think that they can consistently outsmart the market.
There is one thing of which I can assure you. If good performance of the fund is even a minor objective, any portfolio encompassing one hundred stocks (whether the manager is handling one thousand dollars or one billion dollars) is not being operated logically. The addition of the one hundredth stock simply can't reduce the potential variance in portfolio performance sufficiently to compensate for the negative effect its inclusion has on the overall portfolio expectation.
Internally, when we manage portfolios, we figure out what works in large cap, what works in mid cap, what works in small cap. Generally speaking, large cap stocks want earning stability, strong cash flow, margin expansion.
If you aren't willing to own a stock for ten years, don't even think about owning it for ten minutes. Put together a portfolio of companies whose aggregate earnings march upward over the years, and so also will the portfolio's market value.
In choosing a portfolio, investors should seek broad diversification, Further, they should understand that equities--and corporate bonds also--involve risk; that markets inevitably fluctuate; and their portfolio should be such that they are willing to ride out the bad as well as the good times.
You have never lost money in stocks over any 20-year period, but you have wiped out half your portfolio in bonds (after inflation). So which is the riskier asset?