Long term Investment portfolio

So, I have chosen the following allocations for my long term investment portfolio:
80%- FTSE All-World UCITS ETF
20%- Stocks: Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, PepsiCo, Visa, Walt Disney.
Looking at keeping the current allocation percentages but possibly add some more blue-chip stocks in the future.
Initially was going to include an emerging market etc but the All- World ETF has a 10.2% chunk of emerging market in its distribution.
Any suggestions in regards to further diversification and %'s?
Thanks

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Seems a reasonable porfolio and a sensible plan although I’m no expert. Some thoughts…

  • VWRL doesn’t include small caps which you may or may not want to add. You could use an ETF for exposure, but many prefer ITs and an active approach.
  • Another thing worth thinking about is maybe adding bonds to the mix.
  • Some like to have an explicit allocation to property funds, but I’ve never seen the need.
  • Others like assets such as gold, not my cup of tea though.
  • You could look at adding ‘factor’ funds: momentum, value, minimum volitality, liquidity etc: but, again, I’ve never been convinced.
  • Similarly, you could make active plays by overlaying ETFs or ITs to give your portfolio a tilt towards healthcare, technology and so on.

Anyway, just my two pennies’ worth.

Thank you so much for your feedback, at this point in time I have decided not to focus on bonds. (Especially at this stage of my investment journey, age 20)

Yes I looked in to industry based funds but unfortunately trading 212 does not offer fractional shares in these funds. Hopefully they could be added in the future.

Assets seem a bit too voilitile for my liking, don’t know much about them either unfortunately.

Property funds are a good shout. I could possibly add some funds or real estate based stocks in the future

Thanks topher!

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Get involved with the cannabis industry and maybe 1% allocated to crypto’s

You have exposure across geographies, but if you want a properly diversified portfolio then you will need exposure across:

  1. Equities - sectors
  2. Equities - factors
  3. Fixed income
  4. Commodities
  5. Cash

They all change on the basis of the economic cycle, so for sectors you want to be in tech at the moment, but not in industrials. For factors you want to be in quality, but less so in momentum. For fixed income you want treasuries, but not TIPS. For commodities, you want gold, but not oil. For cash, you want USD, but not emerging markets FX.

That’s just a sample, each of the 5 categories has multiple areas that you should Long, and others that you should Short.

The above mentioned examples are for a deflationary regime that we are in, when we enter a reflationary regime in the coming quarter or so, your allocation changes accordingly, as you follow the economic cycle.

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You should add MO at these levels or anything under 40.

I don’t really stand behind the products they offer. Thanks for the suggestion though

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Got some pretty good return on investing in airline/cruise stocks. I’m going to hold onto them at least until people start going back onto airplanes and cruise ships and stocks go back to normal.

Very risky holdings for the medium-term, from my point of view. Be careful.

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I agree with @m3talaxis.
@PiggyBankSaver, it could work out well, but I would suggest some diversification. If you do not diversify, then I really hope that the money that you have invested is just “excess money” and that you do not need any of the money in the short term / medium term, eg. 3 years.

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Isn’t VWRL’s distribution among sectors enough?

Not in it for the short to medium term. 12 years minimum for me

Thanks for reply.
Yeah, you invested at a good time. Some may say that you got lucky. There are speculations over weather the airline industry will ever turn back to ‘normal’. Obviously this not factual and you could make even more money than you have made now. My investment strategy doesn’t match up with this, risk level is too high

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How would you diversify my current portfolio? Any suggestions?

I must say I like your choice for the individual stocks selection. I hear only good things (without doing any research myself) about J&J and the others are stocks I either currently own or would definitely look to acquire given the free cash and compelling entry price.

I would perhaps freeze the size of the all-world ETF down to about 70% and use the new additional 10% on either 1 more ETF, or split between 2 other ETFs to branch your coverage a bit into more specific industries. either something you know well due to work or that has sentimental meaning to you or your family.

Although I am currently all-stocks, I don’t like any 1 position making up more than 40% of my portfolio, which meant I couldn’t put money to some of my fastest drops post-covid-debut as I needed to increase other weakened positions.

perhaps the 5-10% could be towards very small cap, slightly risky (AIM) investments into upcoming companies well geared to growth in a post-covid social environment. either through providing services or goods that make sense with the new “normal” of social distancing and behavioural calming. If you do well you may find a chance to get in early on something promising even just a fraction of the growth history of companies like apple, amazon and microsoft.

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Thank you for your feedback. Yes I’m not too happy with the 80% allocation for VWRL either. Currently doing some research in to possible funds to take up a portion of portfolio. Is it worth looking in to a individual technology fund considering that VWRL has 20% allocation in the the technology sector? Also looking in to a possible fund excluding the US. Can’t seem to find any on trading 212 currently which is a bummer.

perhaps look at the sectors and industries that your ETF only has less than 10% in. see if there is one you understand well enough that you could feasibly pick individual stocks for and find some ETFs that hold these companies in a sizeable portion? then choose the one that seems to be most liquid and lowest fees.

Another potential option: you could replace VWRL with region-specific funds: VEUR, VJPN, VAPX, VFEM and VNRT, for example, or simply VDEV and VFEM. It would bring the total cost down and allow you to fine tune geographic allocations if you wanted. Always thought it would be too much of a faff to rebalance etc to make it worthwhile, but it would be easy enough to do with the forthcoming pie feature.

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I agree with this:

When starting it is easier to stick to ETFs, but spread it around at least geografically, you may prefer to do it by sector. Also, I would not invest everything into ETFs from the same provider, there are also ETFs from HSBC, Legal And General, iShares, etc. I would suggest mixing it.
For example you could do the something like the following:

  • 20% World
  • 20% S&P
  • 10% Nasdaq
  • 15% EuroStoxx or a European ETF
  • 5% Dax ETF
  • 5% FTSE100
  • 5% Japan or Korea (South Korea)
  • 10% Emerging Markets
  • 5% Clean Energy ETF
  • 5% Electric Vehicles or Automation ETF

I have just put some random-ish numbers to give you an idea.
There are loads of ETFs, they have different OCFs (which is what the fee per year).
I tend to use https://www.justetf.com/en/find-etf.html to screen the ETFs and compare them at a glance, note that T212 does not offer all of them. So you might just want to use it to compare the ones available on T212.

Have a look and see what you think, I am also learning so do not just take my word.

Edit: P.S. I have tried to give the USA a high weighting in this example as it represents around half of the “All World” ETF, however I tend to only give it around 20% of my portfolio as I mainly invest in European stocks which I understand better.

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@EquityInvestor Thanks for your feedback. I don’t see any benefit in investing in ETFs from different providers. I know you emphasised diversification but I don’t think that applies to the provider itself.

Yes, I have introduced a couple more funds to my portfolio. I have clean energy and information technology funds

I’m honestly not a huge fan the European funds. The VWRL holds 20% of Europe anyway so don’t feel like I need a separate fund to gain the European exposure.

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