Is 8 ETFs too many?
Experts agree that for most personal investors, a portfolio comprising 5 to 10 ETFs is perfect in terms of diversification. But the number of ETFs is not what you should be looking at.
Generally speaking, fewer than 10 ETFs are likely enough to diversify your portfolio, but this will vary depending on your financial goals, ranging from retirement savings to income generation.
SPY, VOO and IVV are among the most popular S&P 500 ETFs. These three S&P 500 ETFs are quite similar, but may sometimes diverge in terms of costs or daily returns. Investors generally only need one S&P 500 ETF.
You expose your portfolio to much higher risk with sector ETFs, so you should use them sparingly, but investing 5% to 10% of your total portfolio assets may be appropriate. If you want to be highly conservative, don't use these at all.
Investors often wonder how much overlap is acceptable. While there is no universal threshold, a common guideline suggests keeping overlap between ETFs below 50 percent.
Experts agree that for most personal investors, a portfolio comprising 5 to 10 ETFs is perfect in terms of diversification. But the number of ETFs is not what you should be looking at.
ETFs are less risky than individual stocks because they are diversified funds. Their investors also benefit from very low fees.
Think About This: $10,000 invested in the S&P 500 at the beginning of 2000 would have grown to $32,527 over 20 years — an average return of 6.07% per year.
Key Takeaways
For most ETFs, selling after less than a year is taxed as a short-term capital gain. ETFs held for longer than a year are taxed as long-term gains. If you sell an ETF, and buy the same (or a substantially similar) ETF after less than 30 days, you may be subject to the wash sale rule.
Market risk
The single biggest risk in ETFs is market risk. Like a mutual fund or a closed-end fund, ETFs are only an investment vehicle—a wrapper for their underlying investment. So if you buy an S&P 500 ETF and the S&P 500 goes down 50%, nothing about how cheap, tax efficient, or transparent an ETF is will help you.
What is the 4% rule for ETF?
Say an investor has retired with a $1 million portfolio. In her first year of retirement, under the 4% rule, she should withdraw 4% of that portfolio, or $40,000 ($1 million x 0.04). For each subsequent year, she should adjust the withdrawal amount for inflation.
Q: How does the wash sale rule work? If you sell a security at a loss and buy the same or a substantially identical security within 30 calendar days before or after the sale, you won't be able to take a loss for that security on your current-year tax return.
£250k is all you need to double your State Pension. A 4.5% yield on your invested capital of £250k will produce an annual income of £11,250.
Most of your ETFs weigh less than 5% of your total asset allocation. Any individual fund that's below the 5% level won't make much difference to your returns. Its probably a bad sign if your ETFs number in double figures, and their holdings overlap, or you can't remember what each fund is .
A: One mistake is having a portfolio with too many niche ETF products, and another is holding too many ETFs that have overlapping investments. Some investors build their portfolios from the bottom-up, focusing on each investment holding rather than the portfolio as a whole.
ETFs can be safe investments if used correctly, offering diversification and flexibility. Indexed ETFs, tracking specific indexes like the S&P 500, are generally safe and tend to gain value over time. Leveraged ETFs can be used to amplify returns, but they can be riskier due to increased volatility.
A leveraged ETF is a fund that uses financial derivatives and debt to amplify the returns of an underlying index. Certain double or triple-leveraged ETFs can lose more than double or triple the value change of the tracked index. Therefore, these types of speculative investments need to be carefully evaluated.
So, what's the ideal number of funds? Well, there is no right or wrong answer. It can depend on a number of factors including the number of funds you're comfortable monitoring in your portfolio, your investment objectives and risk appetite.
Stock-picking offers an advantage over exchange-traded funds (ETFs) when there is a wide dispersion of returns from the mean. Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) offer advantages over stocks when the return from stocks in the sector has a narrow dispersion around the mean.
It is unlikely for its asset to go up 100% in a single day and so, an ETF can't become zero. An ETF follows a particular index and the securities are present at the same weight in it. So, it can be zero when all the securities go to zero.
How many ETFs should I invest in?
The majority of individual investors should, however, seek to hold 5 to 10 ETFs that are diverse in terms of asset classes, regions, and other factors. Investors can diversify their investment portfolio across several industries and asset classes while maintaining simplicity by buying 5 to 10 ETFs.
For instance, some ETFs may come with fees, others might stray from the value of the underlying asset, ETFs are not always optimized for taxes, and of course — like any investment — ETFs also come with risk.
According to our calculations, a $1000 investment made in February 2014 would be worth $5,971.20, or a gain of 497.12%, as of February 5, 2024, and this return excludes dividends but includes price increases. Compare this to the S&P 500's rally of 178.17% and gold's return of 55.50% over the same time frame.
| Years Invested | Balance At the End of the Period |
|---|---|
| 10 | $102,422 |
| 20 | $379,684 |
| 30 | $1,130,244 |
| 40 | $3,162,040 |
| Discount Rate | Present Value | Future Value |
|---|---|---|
| 20% | $1,000 | $38,337.60 |
| 21% | $1,000 | $45,259.26 |
| 22% | $1,000 | $53,357.64 |
| 23% | $1,000 | $62,820.62 |
