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Hello folks, mid-40’s new stock investor here. Some background: between the wife and I, we have about $2M in tax-advantage retirement accounts mostly in VTI/VXUS and equivalent, a modest house payed for, no debt, 6 months emergency savings in a HYSA, and a couple of years shy of having two 529s fully funded for our kids. Basically, our family picture would be fitting next to the definition of discipled/boring investors.
Around January 2025, we agreed to put $100k in individual stocks/ETFs with Fidelity (not touching options) that, at the time, would seem to gain from the early chaos of this administration: rift between US and eurodefense, radical changes to US healthcare, and later tariffs. Caught some really nice gains from concentrated positions (EUAD, UNH, a couple of biotech, and several penny stock short-squeezes) and managed to limited the downside (10-20% trailing loss on risky/speculative stocks). And we have been very LUCKY: I am not kidding myself, sometimes I’d DD a stock with conviction only to see it fall apart for no apparent reason, or l’ll throw $5k into a WSB meme stock, only to see it 3-10X. So by Dec 2025, we were sitting on almost $300k.
But the constant anxiety, trying to “feel” upcoming macrotrends from news, and constantly monitoring stock price action got to me, bad, to the point where I checked overnight prices before bed, and pre-market prices first thing in the morning. And the daily news swings, without rime or reason, just became too much for me. I read somewhere that “everyone feels a genius in a bull market” and “everyone thinks they have a high risk tolerance until the market wobbles”. Well I have experienced both and I can admit without false pride that I am not cut for concentrated stock picking.
So early January 2026, we have diversified our fidelity portfolio into “sector” focussed value stocks that I gathered from this sub and others. Mostly solid names, presently battered by policy headwinds or sector rotation. These are all intended to be long term holds, with a cap to 5% of portfolio. I tried to mostly stay away from crypto, AI, space, and mag7. I did my best, lots of deep discounts but most likely have some dogs and value traps, and I’d appreciate any warning about particular ones that you strongly feel are heading for disaster.
Heath Insurance/ care: UNH, CNC, MOH, CI, ELV, HUM, MLAB, AVTR, OGN,
Vaccines/pharma: NVO,PFE, MRK, MRNA, BIIB, BHVN, BMY, NVAX, PRGO, PHIO, IXHL,
Discretionary: AMZN, STLA, RH, SG, WEN, LRN, GME, CAVA,
Staples: TGT, PEP, CPB, SFM, NGVC, FLO, KVUE,
Communication/Media: NFLX, TDD, META, ATEX,
IT/Software: MSTR, ADBE, GLOB, HUBS, NOW, CRM, TEAM, CTM,
Financial: FISV, PGR, PYPL, GPN
Material/Industrial : ASPN, SMR, VAL, XIFR.
Thank you for reading and for your feedback.