Hi, Personal Finance. I’m a relative novice to investing, but have thrown some money into the market pretty regularly since last year. Before that, I had really only put money in on a handful of occasions, whenever I had money I felt would be better invested than spent. My portfolio is just around $30k, and I’m investing money every month in order to ensure I’m dollar cost averaging whatever isn’t doing so well but has promise, and throwing more into the things that are doing well. In addition, I’m also reinvesting my dividends and not selling anything I hold.

That said, I got pretty lucky over the last few years and found a few ETFs and stocks that have since taken off because I happened to invest at a few key points when the market was at its lowest (boy do I wish I had put more in). I wish I could say it’s because I know what I’m doing, but I just see it as really good, accidental timing. I’ve got some stocks and ETFs that I bought because of good dividends, and others that I bought because of a potential upside in the future.

I’ve found myself continually adjusting the dividend side of my portfolio, but doing nothing with the growth stocks and ETFs that took off. I feel like I should continue to invest in those, beyond dividend reinvestment, but seem to have a mental block because the price per share is so drastically different than when I first bought. Do any of you struggle with this? How do you get over it? What’s a good way to keep investing without just chasing success like a drug? Four items in my portfolio account for 74% of my growth portfolio value, despite only making up 39% of my total growth portfolio shares. I’m torn on whether to invest more in what’s working, or leaving those alone and continuing to diversify.

  • tburkhol@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    When I was younger, I did more individual stocks and many different funds/etfs. Felt great when one did well, and I still hold some that have 10x gains. Some of those 10x gains were a decade ago, and have been pretty flat since then, but they’re still 10-baggers. I, too, tended not to put more into those big gainers, partly because they now seem expensive, partly because investing more would reduce my total percentage gains. When I was young and your portfolio was small, those individual wins had a big impact on the portfolio and it felt important to get the best possible immediate performance.

    Over the years, though, the differences between funds average out. Gains over a year or two become a small fraction of the gains over a decade. I can see that some of my winners are only winners because I happened to buy them during a recession, like anything bought during the Covid panic. It’s become easier to dismiss the effect of stock/fund picking, and I’ve consolidated most of those funds into the stereotypical broad market indexes. Focussed ETFs, like LIT or QCLN, are safe from incompetence or fraud in individual company leadership, but the next administration can kill whole sectors with a change in tax or regulatory policy.