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I am curious how many stocks and funds/ETFs people here actually own.
Personally, I hold around 80 individual stocks and 14 funds/ETFs. Most of my funds are low-cost broad index funds from different regions in the world, but I also have a few niche ones focused on defense, space and security.
My main goal is to minimize company-specific risk. There are simply too many great businesses out there, both small caps, micro caps, large caps, and mega caps that I want to own.
I mainly invest in Sweden, Norway, the US, and a few other countries.
My focus is long-term dividend growth, but I also own some BDCs, REITs, and oil/shipping companies that provide strong income streams. Some of those dividends are even essentially tax-free for me due to their structure or domicile (for example, Swedish holdings or Norwegian companies registered in places like Singapore or Bermuda have tax-free dividends for me as a Swedish investor).
I sometimes wonder if many investors are diversified enough. A lot of people seem to hold only 1–5 stocks, which feels very concentrated to me. You miss out on entire sectors, countries, and business models that could perform well over different market cycles.
If you are too deep in tech, you are very vulnerable to the market climate, and if you are too deep in defensives/value stocks, you risk missing out on innovation, growth, and some of the market’s biggest winners.
Of course, concentration can lead to massive gains if you’re right, but diversification lets me sleep better at night while still building what I hope becomes a growing cash-flow machine through dividend reinvestment.
So, how diversified are you?
\- How many stocks do you own?
\- How many funds/ETFs?
\- Do you prefer concentration or broad diversification?
\- At what point do you think diversification becomes over-diversification, or is that even a thing?