Thanks for the correction @davidrmoran. (Regan / Reagan.)
FD did not say anything untrue. He merely “misread” my original post where I referenced a hypothetical 40-50 year time-frame. His examples did not meet that criteria.
- I did not recommend @Joyes invest in the S&P 500.
- I did not recommend that he diversify.
- I do not believe diversification produces higher returns then a more focused portfolio.
@Joyes stated, ”I'm looking for tips on how to diversify my holdings in order to increase my portfolio over time.”
I honed in on that single sentence. Diversifying beyond what he already owns would likely lower his returns. But diversifying might reduce his risk level making it easier to ride-out extreme market fluctuations.
Please note - None of the diversifiers I mentioned is meant to be a recommendation. They merely suggest that diversification can extend well beyond just stocks & bonds.

@Joyes
One of the most helpful things I encountered when beginning an investment journey was to purchase and devour materials which covered aspects considered helpful for new investors as well as more seasoned folks with more capital. Upon graduation from college, my parents purchased for me a subscription to Kiplinger. I still have that subscription some 45 years later. Many sample portfolios are included in the magazine as well.
Barron's was mentioned previously, but I'd suggest Kiplinger for someone starting out. It's a great tool for learning and becoming familiar with investments.

Diversification by itself is too generic, which is why I made my point.
So again, if you are diversifying in just RE, stocks, CEFs, commodities. They are not guaranteed to be better than SPY.
I remember so many posters quoting Merriman, saying your stocks must be diversified, just to come short in the last 15 years.
The next 10 years can be different than the last. I don't care what happened 50 years ago; I only care what the next years will do.
Basically, diversification is just a buzzword; the devil is in the details.
Example: If you invested in one of the most recommended bond funds, the US total bond index, VBTLX=BND, it made 1.5% annually in the last 10 years. The performance matches MM with no volatility, see (chart). BND has been a pretty bad choice, IMO.

FD - You misread my sentence. I said ”after 40-50 years”. PRWCX did not even exist 50 years ago.. David Giroux was 1 year old at the time.
Diversification means having different asset types - like stocks, real estate, bonds, cash, commodities, precious metals and non-dollar currencies
Diversification also includes investment styles like growth, value, momentum, technical based, risk-premia, market neutral, long-short, options based, and several others.
Diversification also includes geographic area (ie domestic, international, regional).
Diversification also includes instrument type like OEFs, CEFs, ETFs, stocks, bonds, collectables, hard assets.
Within bonds or bond funds diversification means owning a range of credit quality (from AAA down to C-). It also includes a variety of years-to-maturity & duration.
How can you say that a combination of several of the above (pick 6-8) over 50 years would have beaten the S&P or would have presented a higher overall year-to-year risk profile?

@hank

Diversification doesn’t guarantee better returns. Generally, diversification reduces risk and lowers longer term performance. If you can, throw 100% into a single low cost S&P index fund, shut your eyes for 40-50 years while ignoring the markets. Then take a look. Chances are you’ll have more money after 40 or 50 years than you would have had in a more diversified portfolio.

The above is a myth. All you have to do is see the performance in the last 15 years of SPY compared to SPY+IWN+EEM or compared to PRWCX. Both PRWCX+SPY have better performance and lower volatility = higher Sharpe ratio. When US LC doing well it's difficult to beat them.
See results (link).

Most people who lived through the Great Depression beginning in 1929 wanted nothing to do ever again with investing. By some accounts, it was around 1950 when equities got back to their 1929 levels. Not many of us date back quite that far. However, most of us here lived through the ‘07–08 ”great financial crisis”. Domestic blue chip stocks / stock funds tanked about 50% over that 16-17 month period. International stock funds fared worse, some falling 60-70%. Only the very highest rated bond funds held up. Some funds invested in junk bonds lost 50-60% over that time.

You have just proved my point. Did diversification in other stock categories help you?
The only true diversification is thru bonds, but again, it depends on the holdings.

“… tips on how to diversify my holdings in order to increase my portfolio over time.”
Diversification doesn’t guarantee better returns. Generally, diversification reduces risk and lowers longer term performance. If you can, throw 100% into a single low cost S&P index fund, shut your eyes for 40-50 years while ignoring the markets. Then take a look. Chances are you’ll have more money after 40 or 50 years than you would have had in a more diversified portfolio.
But, is the above realistic?
Most people who lived through the Great Depression beginning in 1929 wanted nothing to do ever again with investing. By some accounts, it was around 1950 when equities got back to their 1929 levels. Not many of us date back quite that far. However, most of us here lived through the ‘07–08 ”great financial crisis”. Domestic blue chip stocks / stock funds tanked about 50% over that 16-17 month period. International stock funds fared worse, some falling 60-70%. Only the very highest rated bond funds held up. Some funds invested in junk bonds lost 50-60% over that time.
How would you react 10-12 months into the above saga with your portfolio down 35% from the previous year’s peak and the media ablaze with horror takes of loss and predictions of doom?
By a strange quirk of math, the % gain needed to get back to “break-even” is greater than the % lost. If your portfolio falls by 25% in one year you’ll need a 33% gain the following year to get back to break-even. If you lose 50% of your portfolio you’ll need a 100% return to get back to your old level.
Just food for thought.
All the recommendations in this thread are excellent. Putting a portfolio together is a very personal thing. No “one-size” fits all. My only “tip” would be to become a regular Barron’s reader. No single publication has done more to help me invest over the past 50 years. It’s not glamorous. It’s not really about mutual funds. And the articles are anything but consistent. You’ll read “bulls” and “bears” in the same issue. But it will get you thinking about money … money and risk.
Added Thought …
I like looking at model portfolios. T Rowe Price is noted for being a good asset allocator.
This LINK will take you to one of their web pages and a discussion of allocation, complete with pie charts. I have one minor gripe. That is they don’t include commodities in these sketches. While they can sometimes jump up and bite you, I think having 2%-5% in commodities / precious metals is a pretty good idea.

My thoughts re BLNDX...is I am passing on it as long as I can get 5%plus in tbills...why get greedy and screw around with the black box stuff?

Well said, I agree.

what @Graust says
it is possible you could leave things alone or indeed ditch SP500 fund
depending
btw your Bond funds is inaccurate (of course)
some of your questions can be answered with just a bit more googling on your part

OUCH,,,, just got my 2024 property tax bill on reassessed home values. Up 25% since last year!! From ~4k to ~5K/yr. Yikes!

Welcome @Joyes!
Please tell us the following:
1. Your age and when you plan to retire
2. If this is the majority of your investment assets, or if you have anything held anywhere else (most people have the majority of their investments in their 401k/work retirement account especially when first getting started)
3. How much you hold (as a percentage of the total in each fund)
4. What your risk tolerance is (are you ok with being down 20% at various times and will you stick with the same plan, or sell out and go more conservative?)
5. No need to mention dollar amounts, as this is a public online forum (ie, to protect yourself).
6. Thanks in advance!

So going back 30 or so years there were a bunch of investors called the turtle traders...one guru guy trained them up as CTAs... they all made a bunch of money
Some say they were just at the right place at the right time... commodity up cycle...trend following then hit a flat spot for quite a while
Maybe good place to be during stagflation cycle?
Trading currencies is tough, not that I would know but governments can flip the card table on you at any time
My thoughts re BLNDX...is I am passing on it as long as I can get 5%plus in tbills...why get greedy and screw around with the black box stuff?

Bought BIL,TPSC, WDC and am watching NVDA and may just sell and take profits. I have other stocks in the TECH sector. DG, BALL and SQM are big losers for me. Once they get below .5% of portfolio I will sell then watch them go up naturally. Good to see EW bounce back a bit.

I have been nibbling on bits and pieces of things that I own that are down big that day (recently a share here and there of GOOG, NVDA, LRCX, ASML, etc.). Last two days, bought a handful of shares of EW (it dropped from near $100 to $50’s yesterday), DXCM (similarly almost cut in half today), and SAIA (down $20-50 today). The first two are new positions, and tiny positions because I am a chicken haha. SAIA was an add.
Trimmed LLY down to 2 shares (should have done that $100 ago), as others are jumping on the weight loss bandwagon and will have better drugs (kind of like PFE’s Viagra was first, but later drugs were “better”). Read in a comment section on SA that a retired pharma salesman feels GLP-1s and the like will soon become like statins (basically commoditized and generic) due to their widespread health benefits. Also have added to other semi names over recent days (just a share or two at a time bc of my lack of confidence)—ARM, AMD, NVDA, etc.
In my mutual fund only account (cannot add money to this, but it’s a former 403b with current employer that migrated from Prudential to Fidelity), I have been adding in $100 increments to whatever is down. PRWCX remains my biggest holding in that account at >20%.
I’m probably too “growthy” for this current market, but then days like today happen and balances jump more. But down 5% or more in most of my/family accounts (from July peak).

@MikeM,
I can absorb up to 5% loss before exiting. But I am not going to increase it which means I am going to exit sooner than latter to reduce clutter in my portfolio. I have not found the magic pill / perennial longevity fund. When rates were low (pre-Covid), it was inexpensive to run these experiments but not so much now.
Edit: Every time I start a new position, I start hoping to increase it to a minimum 10% of portfolio. Sadly, most of the times I fold them without increasing from the initial position. Oddly enough, I seem to have more luck with individual stocks than funds and I spend very little time researching stocks and almost all of the time I spend on investments is trying out new funds, which makes me wonder quite often if investment outcomes are mostly luck.

Concur with @gman57 and @yogibb to move to your question to Discussion.
Additional information about yourself with respect to your goals/investment horizon and risk tolerance will help other posters in their recommendation.

Agree with @gman57 - edit & move to Discussions.
Minor tinkering:
In stocks, you have LCG and LCB. May be switch LCB SP500 VFIAX / VOO to LCB total stock VTSAX / VTI.
In bonds, may be switch from Total (investment-grade) Bond market VBTLX to core-plus VCPIX / VCPAX.
You got stocks-LCG and multisector bonds covered well.
Others may suggest more changes based on your personal situation (approx age, taxable or tax-deferred/free) and goals.

BLNDX is advertised as an "all weather" fund.
I was also somewhat surprised that BLNDX lost approx. 2% in the last 2 days.
As a retired and conservative investor, I am looking for a little more consistency.

After posting the above on July 19, I sold the fund before it lost even more of its value.

Market-neutral (50-50 long-short) global ESG quant fund from Bridgeway. High expenses of 6.17% after 1.38% waiver until 11/1/25 are from a complex absolute-return strategy.

Hello Everyone,
I'm new to the globe of mutual fund investing, so I'm looking for tips on how to diversify my holdings in order to increase my portfolio over time. My portfolio is now made up of a combination of bond and equity funds, but I want to make sure that my approach is sound and situated for future returns.
This is a quick look at everything I currently own:
Mutual Funds for Equity:
Bond funds: T. Rowe Prices Blue Chip Growth Funds (TRBCX), Financing Contrafund (FCNTX), Vanguard 500 Index Funds (VFIAX), and
PIMCO Income Funds (PONAX) and Vanguard Total Bonds Market Index Funds (VBTLX)
I would much appreciate your insights on the following few questions I have:
Diversification: Do my bond and stock holdings exhibit sufficient diversity? Do you suggest adding any particular industries or fund kinds (international, small-cap, sector-specific) to attain greater diversification?
Growth Potential: Do you think certain mutual funds or investment strategies have particularly significant potential for growth over the next five to ten years, given the state of the market? Funds with a solid track record of success and reputed fund managers catch my attention in particular.
Risk Control: In what ways do you control risk in the mutual fund holdings? Do you employ any specific funds or different asset classes as a hedge against future market downturns?
Costs and Fees: When choosing mutual funds, how significant are cost ratios and mlops fees? What are some recommendations for locating affordable, high-quality funds?
I appreciate your assistance in advance! I'm excited to hone my investing strategy for greater long-term rewards and to gain from the collective wisdom of this group.

Remember this?
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