ETFs are a good choice for long-term asset building, diversification and when it comes to a good night’s sleep. But what about individual stocks? In principle, they perform the same functions as an ETF, but this sleepy thing can sometimes be a little more strenuous – or maybe not if you invest conservatively.
When I invested my portfolio at Flatex, my first purchase was a single share, followed by ETFs. When I look back on my first purchases, it was a little chaos. Minimum amounts fought for a transaction space. The broker certainly jumped in the air during this time. Fortunately it went on better, also because I got involved in the whole topic more comprehensively and above all more diversified. Therefore a shoutout to all readers, bloggers and authors who helped me and still help me.
But back to the topic: What about individual stocks at the moment? I have now divided my portfolio into 50% ETFs and 50% single stocks. Mainly because I want to benefit from the shorter dividend intervals and be directly involved in interesting companies. Portfolio performance shows me that the selection was quite good. I see that as pure luck…but to a very very minimal extent not. Because I don’t invest in pennystocks or something like that. There are eight individual stocks and two ETFs in the top 10 by performance (IZF). So far I haven’t had any extremely bad experiences. If there really is a blatant stock market quake, it will of course be exciting.
Top 10:
- Microsoft
- Asiakastieto Group
- Emerging Market Bond
- Realty
- SAP
- World ETF
- Castellum
- BB Biotech
- AT+T
Can’t be, can it? No bad experiences at all? Yes, there was something there. At the beginning of my career as a small investor, I violated one of the investor rules that Ben Carlson in his book “the wealth of common sense” also implicitly addresses: don’t follow an alleged expert. I bought because someone pointed out a share that was “certainly worth it”. It wasn’t a big loss, but every day I wondered why I put this stock in my portfolio. The answer: I probably didn’t want to miss this “chance”. Stupid idea. Then it disappeared from the portfolio and I had learned my lesson. Don’t follow the crowd, and certainly don’t follow gurus.
Now you might ask yourself how the selection of stocks takes place. No, I don’t spend 150+ hours analyzing companies in detail. In the article “Criteria for Dividend Shares” I went into this in more detail. I was also particularly lucky with the conservative selection system presented by Pim Van Vliet in his book High Returns from Low Risk. Overall, I rate my portfolio as a dividend portfolio with outliers. 😉 By the way, you can see my last monthly returns in the last article, which deals with the last price setbacks.
What is the bottom line? My experiences with individual stocks are good. If I think about it again, they are even very good. Why is that? Probably because the companies are relatively solid. But who knows that? Oh yes, the future. It’s a damn shame that I don’t have any psychic abilities. 😉