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Building a Successful Investment Portfolio

Every person strives to the achievement of a particular lifestyle they have built in their minds. You have probably decided in which neighborhood you want to live, what car you want to have in your garage and what cloths to hang in your wardrobe. Unfortunately, you need money to buy all these things and if you fall in the category of the average person, you constantly make calculations on how much money you need to sustain such a lifestyle.

The first step toward the achievement of the dreamed lifestyle is the building of an investment portfolio. The main components that should be included are:

  • Retirement plan
  • An emergency cash reserve that will sustain your living for at least six months
  • Investments that are diversified enough to ensure you risk insurance

Your investment portfolio should be debt-free and should include assets from different classes. Once you have made a general plan on the construction of the portfolio, you should embark on its realization.

Actions before You Start

Before starting constructing your investment portfolio you should make a clear identification of what you own, including stocks, bonds, mutual funds, property, bank accounts or cash money you possess. After this you should write down what you owe, including different types of loans you have taken, credit card balances or whatever other liabilities. In order to facilitate your work you should use a balance sheet. You should not spare yourself at this point and list both all your current holdings and debts in order to build an efficient in financial terms portfolio. In this way you will be able to exactly determine your current financial position in order to be able to make an accurate plan for your future.

After you have listed all your debts and possessions you should commit yourself to change. You should not be afraid a facing the dynamics of the financial world and take the appropriate steps to ensure that you are ready to fight them. Since it may take you as long as years to fully establish a feasible investment portfolio, you should apply the necessary discipline. Only after sustaining stern control over your spending and investment, you will be able to reach the financial goal you have set in front of you.

To get the most out of your money, whether you are interested in mutual funds, stocks, ETFs or options, you need two main things - the knowledge and the right trading platform.
As for the trading platform, we can highly recommend you try Zecco and E*TRADE.
Zecco offers free stock/etf trading, no account minimum, trading community, real time quotes, and is also protected and insured against loss by SIPC. Opening a Zecco account to take advantage of $0 stock trades allows you to save money, which you can reinvest instead of paying brokerage commissions. These fees can make really big difference for long-term investing options like retirement plans (Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, Rollover IRA - 401k).
E*TRADE has been ranked #1 Online Broker for third consecutive year by SmartMoney magazine (written by the Wall Street Journal staff and owned by Dow Jones). It was ranked based on the categories: Mutual Funds & Investment Products, Research, Trading Tools, Banking Services and Customer Service. They have been around for 25 years, have $100 Billion in customer assets and 4.5 million accounts. Open an E*TRADE account here and get bonus 100 commission free trades.
For the knowledge part we always recommend subscribing to the The Wall Street Journal (and save over 75%).
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