/biz/ - Business & Finance

>>16431180
VTI has 3613 individual holdings while SPY has 506. With 40 holdings you’d have to make sure they actually were diversified, and you’d have to do a lot of homework to make sure there weren’t major problems with any one company. You’ll be overwhelmed every earnings season trying to listen to all the conference calls and follow all the analyst reports, etc. It’s just not practical for one person to follow the goings on for 40 companies, and its too few companies to easily offset risk like in a broad etf or mutual fund.

That’s why conventional wisdom suggests owning something like SPY and VTI, and then having a few stock picks of your own that you can actually follow. You’re already diversified if you’re 80% SPY and then 20% in a few different picks of your own.

Also maybe want to be up to 5% gold in a safe deposit box because you never know.