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Srabin/Getty Images August 03, 2022 Bankrate senior reporter James F. Royal, Ph.D., covers investing and wealth management. His work has been cited by CNBC, the Washington Post, The New York Times and more. Brian Beers is the managing editor for the Wealth team at Bankrate. He oversees editorial coverage of banking, investing, the economy and all things money. Bankrate logo The Bankrate promise
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Diversification means owning a variety of assets that perform differently over time, but not too much of any one investment or type. In terms of stock investing, a diversified portfolio would contain 20-30 (or more) different stocks across many industries. But a diversified portfolio could also contain other assets – bonds, funds, real estate, CDs and even savings accounts. Each type of asset performs differently as an economy grows and shrinks, and each offers varying potential for gain and loss: offer the potential for the highest return over time, but can fluctuate wildly over shorter periods. can offer steadier returns with a fixed payout, but can vary as interest rates rise and fall. tend to be diversified because they usually hold many investments, but a specific fund may hold only one kind, for example, consumer goods companies. So, a fund could be broadly diversified or narrowly, depending on how it’s managed. can appreciate slowly over time and offer the potential for income, too. But physical real estate can be expensive to maintain, and commissions are high. and will not fluctuate in value but will grow steadily based on the interest rate or other contractual terms. As some of these assets are rising rapidly, others will remain steady or fall. Over time, the frontrunners may turn into laggards, or vice versa. In other words, these assets are not highly correlated with one another, and that’s key to the appeal of diversification. And it’s easier and cheaper than ever to ensure that your portfolio has a broad array of investments, . How diversification benefits you
Diversification has several benefits for you as an investor, but one of the largest is that it can actually improve your potential returns and stabilize your results. By owning multiple assets that perform differently, you reduce the overall risk of your portfolio, so that no single investment can hurt you too much. It’s this “free lunch” that makes diversification a truly attractive option for investors. Because assets perform differently in different economic times, diversification smoothens your returns. While stocks are zigging, bonds may be zagging, and CDs just keep steadily growing. In effect, by owning various amounts of each asset, you end up with a weighted average of the returns of those assets. Although you won’t achieve the startlingly high returns from owning just one rocket-ship stock, you won’t suffer its ups-and-downs either. While , it can’t eliminate all risk. Diversification reduces asset-specific risk – that is, the risk of owning too much of one stock () or stocks in general, relative to other investments. However, it doesn’t eliminate market risk, which is the risk of owning that type of asset at all. For example, diversification can limit how much your portfolio falls if some stocks decline, but it can’t protect you if investors decide they don’t like stocks and punish the whole asset class. For assets sensitive to interest rates, such as bonds, diversification helps protect you from a problem at a specific company, but it won’t protect you from the threat of rising rates generally. Even cash, or investments such as CDs or a , are threatened by , although deposits are typically guaranteed from principal loss up to $250,000 per account type per bank. So diversification works well for asset-specific risk, but is powerless against market-specific risk. How to develop a diversification strategy
With the advent of low-cost and , it’s actually simple to create a portfolio that’s well-diversified. Not only are these funds cheap, but major brokerages now allow you to trade many of them at no cost, too, so it’s tremendously easy to get in the game. A basic diversified portfolio could be as simple as holding a broadly diversified index fund such as one , which owns stakes in hundreds of companies. But you’ll probably want some exposure to bonds as well to help stabilize the portfolio, and guaranteed returns in the form of CDs help, too. Finally, cash in a savings account can also give you stability as well as a source of emergency funds if you need it. If you want to expand beyond this basic approach, you can diversify your stock and bond holdings. For example, you might add a fund that owns companies in emerging markets or international companies more generally, because an S&P 500 fund doesn’t own those. Or you may opt for , since that too is outside the S&P 500. For bonds, you might choose funds that have short-term bonds and medium-term bonds, to give you exposure to both and give you a higher return in the longer-dated bonds. For CDs, you can that gives you exposure to interest rates across a period of time. Some financial advisors even suggest that clients consider to their portfolios to further diversify beyond traditional assets such as stocks and bonds. Finally, however you construct your portfolio, you’re looking for assets that respond differently in different economic climates. It doesn’t create diversification if you have different funds that own all the same large stocks, because they’ll perform mostly the same over time. And if all this sounds like too much work, a fund or even a robo-advisor can do it for you. A will move your assets from higher-return assets (stocks) to lower-risk (bonds) over time, as you approach some target year in the future, typically your retirement date. Similarly, or target date. In either case, you’re likely to pay more than if you did it yourself, however. Bottom line
Diversification offers an easy way to smoothen your returns while potentially increasing them as well. And you can have a variety of models for how diversified you want your portfolio to be, from a basic all-stock portfolio to one that holds assets across the spectrum of risk and reward. SHARE: Bankrate senior reporter James F. Royal, Ph.D., covers investing and wealth management. His work has been cited by CNBC, the Washington Post, The New York Times and more. Brian Beers is the managing editor for the Wealth team at Bankrate. He oversees editorial coverage of banking, investing, the economy and all things money.