ETF Monthly Update

A review of our ETF Portfolio.

Our ETF portfolio is our highest allocation, lowest risk and lowest maintenance portfolio. We simply add to our diversified positions on a monthly basis, this can even be done with a debit order. We highly recommend novice investors to start with ETFs rather than individual stocks.  

The volatility experienced with individual stocks is not for the faint of heart and although we view ourselves as long-term investors we do not believe in a buy-and-hold blindly forever strategy. Each stock requires periodic maintenance to ensure that management is still executing and your original thesis is still intact. This requires a lot of effort by reviewing each earnings report, studying the competition and generally keeping up with the company. The effort increases with the level of risk involved and therefore our portfolios require different amounts of effort and risk tolerance in the following order: Biotech Longshots > Unicorn Portfolio > Core Fund > Safe Haven > ETF. It is actually quite obvious that a preclinical drug company can experience massive volatility on a single piece of news, compared to a company like Apple which should keep chugging along for years to come.   

This will also be an interesting experiment as we compare the performance of our 5 portfolios over different time periods.  Here is a reminder of our 5 portfolios and their core mandates: 

In total we started with $70000, which was roughly R1 Million at the time.

ETF Portfolio ($28,000)

Investing in the general market for diverse exposure to companies all over the world (Risk 3/10).

Core Fund ($20,000) 

Investing in established, growing market leaders. (Risk 6/10)

Unicorn Portfolio ($10,000)

Investing in asymmetrical risk/reward opportunities. (Risk 8/10)

Safe Haven ($10,000) 

Investing in indestructible SWAN (Sleep Well At Night) companies (Risk 5/10).

Biotech Longshots ($2000) 

Investing in the most innovative, early-stage biotech companies (Risk 10/10).  

Disclosure

This is not financial advice and only the opinions of the author. The $28K in the ETF portfolio is not real money and only a demonstration of a typical portfolio.