SaurusDNA

That's what's worrying me... :-(

I've got 10% of my portfolio in Bitcoin and Ethereum (50% EACH). Each time either of them grows 20%, I take out half the profits and buy proper JSE stocks with the profits. That way, I've taken out several times my initial investment, so if it plummets in the long run, I've still scored massive on its growth. I think the risk is only if you get greedy and leave everything there that you may get hurt in the long run. Just come up with a good risk control strategy. My strategy of waiting for 20% growth and then taking half the profit and using it to buy on JSE has worked wonders. I've already made back several times my initial investment, so if stocks collapse to zero, I'm still okay. In other words, I'm using bitcoin and ethereum short-term as my JSE stocks funds generator...

Any thoughts on Ellies? It was one of my lucky stocks. I put quite a few K on Ellies when it was 0.14 per share and now it's 0.41 As a result, I'm heavily over-invested in Ellies percentage-wise, so I have a choice: Option 1) I can sell my profits and buy into some of my under-invested stocks to balance my profile again before the January release of financials. Option 2) I can keep me Ellies stocks until the January announcement of financials and risk losing it all or scoring big time. Normally, I would naturally hold the stock and see, but at the moment, it makes up a large chunk of my portfolio due to my past luck with Ellies earlier this year. So, any thoughts on Ellies' future?

I will certainly look at NFEMOM too. Thanks! If I collapsed the locals into 2 or 3 ETFs, what sort of balance between T40 and Midcap? 50/50? I'm still reluctant to sell STXIND because it's done so well for me, and I like the idea of quality (STXQUA) rather than purely market cap. But I have also had the feeling that RAFI and QUA are too similar, so I might well drop RAFI as Bandit suggested. And I also think converting US to WD makes sense. I'm loving this thread - really helpful!!!

These are exactly the types of ideas I was hoping to get. Thanks for your useful thoughts! I'm 46 years old.

This is my ETF portfolio. I'm interested to hear any thoughts on how you might tweak it and why... SYGWD 15% STXEMG 15% STXIND 15% SYGUS 14% GLPROP 7% SYGJP 7% STXQUA 7% ASHT40 7% STXRAF 7% ASHMID 6%

You're probably right but I'm very attached to my Kumba stocks! I would sell them all and buy exxaro with the whole amount, I think, but sometimes it's hard to let go...

I have roughly equal amounts in KIO and EXX, and I've been meaning to sell one because it's duplication (the graphs are almost identical), and exxaro owns 20% of KIO anyway. But I've been holding on to both since I can't decide which one to keep and which one to buy. Any thoughts?

It's also done extremely well for me. It's my second favourite ETF after INDI.

@The Local Tourist: I agree with Bandit about duplication, especially with adding a Sygnia ITRIX. If I were to add one or two more ETFs to your portfolio, I'd go with Satrix Emerging Markets (STXEMG) for a broader global cover because you're already US top-heavy and Sygnia ITRIX World won't change that. Also. maybe Coreshares Global Property (GLPROP) to have some property too. But if you don't want too many and don't want to add an extra Emerging Markets ETF, I agree that ASHGEQ or Sygnia world (SYGWD) alone would be better than SP500. ie. Have either (Option 1: ) S&P500 AND Emerging Markets (STXEMG) or have (Option 2: ) only ASHGEQ or SYGWD. Otherwise you're just duplicating US stocks and becoming too heavy there.

No emotional decisions! Make your strategy and stick to it! So often, I see guys at the last minute changing their mind and buying a fast rising stock in favor of a solid stock they've been wanting to buy for months. Those fast rising stocks are often near the top, and they stop rising or drop again, whereas they would have made much more on their solid stock had they just stuck to their original strategy. Thus, my most important tip would be: "No emotional decisions! Make your strategy and stick to it!"

The difference between ETFs and stocks is volatility. ETFs will roughly follow (or slightly outperform perhaps) the market/sector average, but stocks have more volatility, so there is potential for good growth if one stock jumps. However, the more your stocks are diversified, the less effect a good stock will have on your bottom line and the closer you will be to the market average. (Obviously you also want to have enough to minimize risk). For example, you have R50,000 to spend and you buy 5 stocks at R10,000 each. Four mimic the market and return 20% in the first year and one has a freak 100% return. You have made R18,000 profit. But if you had used your R50,000 to buy 20 stocks of R2,500 each, and 19 mimic the market (20%) and there's the one freak 100% return. You only make R14,750 profit. Thus, the more diversified, the less effect a good stock has on your profit. There is an exponential decrease in risk as the number of stocks increase. Past a certain point (20 shares), even doubling your number of stocks to 40 only decreases risk by than less than 1%, but you have lost your overall volatility. Above 20 stocks and you're better off doing only ETFs, since statistically, your portfolio will exactly mimic the market, and ETFs slightly outperform the market average. Therefore, roughly 10 - 15 stocks is the perfect mix between risk and volatility for buy & hold investing, or even less (maybe 10 stocks) if you have a couple of ETFs as well to balance out the risk. I'm slightly older and closer to retirement than many investors on this forum, so I prefer less risk (and less volatility), and thus have more stocks in my portfolio. Thus, I have 40% of my total portfolio in 10 ETFs and 60% of my portfolio in 15 stocks.