The Hero or the Goat?

When choosing investments all of us sometime fall into the "halo" effect trap.  Apple has been strong so let's get some of that. Netflix is a big winner I'll take some of that too.  We see recent performance in the financial press and have a FOMO moment. 

But that is not the way to investing nirvana. Sure it is okay to take a moonshot once in a while with a small portion of your portfolio invested in a company you really believe in, but just like salt on your potato, too much will make it inedible.

The way to building a portfolio for the long run is to embrace that markets are unpredictable and to select a large diversified basket of securities. Maybe this is the year of small caps or maybe it is foreign markets that will rule. Perhaps this year natural resources will be the big winner or maybe it's time for tech to breakout.  I don't know and you don't know. So the only sane approach is to own some of everything. True, we will only own a small piece of this years Hero, but we will only own a small portion of this years Goat too.

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