How to build an investment portfolio 1. Decide how much help..

How to build an investment portfolio
1. Decide how much help you want
If building an investment portfolio from scratch sounds like a chore, you can still invest and manage your money without taking the DIY route. Robo-advisors are an inexpensive alternative. They take your risk tolerance and overall goals into account and build and manage an investment portfolio for you.

2. Choose an account that works toward your goals
To build an investment portfolio, you’ll need an investment account.
There are several different types of investment accounts. Some, like IRAs, are meant for retirement and offer tax advantages for the money you invest. Regular taxable brokerage accounts are better for nonretirement goals, like a down payment on a house. If you need money you’re planning on investing within the next five years, it may be better suited to a high-yield savings account. Consider what exactly it is you're investing for before you choose an account. You can open an IRA or brokerage account at an online broker — you can see some of our top picks for IRAs.
3. Choose your investments based on your risk tolerance
After opening an investment account, you’ll need to fill your portfolio with the actual assets you want to invest in. Here are some common types of investments.
Stocks
Stocks are a tiny slice of ownership in a company. Investors buy stocks that they believe will go up in value over time. The risk, of course, is that the stock might not go up at all, or that it might even lose value. To help mitigate that risk, many investors invest in stocks through funds — such as index funds, mutual funds or ETFs — that hold a collection of stocks from a wide variety of companies. If you do opt for individual stocks, it’s usually wise to allocate only 5% to 10% of your portfolio to them. Learn about how to buy stocks.
Bonds
Bonds are loans to companies or governments that get paid back over time with interest. Bonds are considered to be safer investments than stocks, but they generally have lower returns. Since you know how much you’ll receive in interest when you invest in bonds, they’re referred to as fixed-income investments. This fixed rate of return for bonds can balance out the riskier investments, such as stocks, within an investor’s portfolio. Learn how to invest in bonds.
Mutual funds
There are a few different kinds of mutual funds you can invest in, but their general advantage over buying individual stocks is that they allow you to add instant diversification to your portfolio. Mutual funds allow you to invest in a basket of securities, made up of investments such as stocks or bonds, all at once. Mutual funds do have some degree of risk, but they are generally less risky than individual stocks. Some mutual funds are actively managed, but those tend to have higher fees and they don’t often deliver better returns than passively managed funds, which are commonly known as index funds.
Index funds and ETFs try to match the performance of a certain market index, such as the S&P 500. Because they don't require a fund manager to actively choose the fund's investments, these vehicles tend to have lower fees than actively managed funds. The main difference between ETFs and index funds is that ETFs can be actively traded on an exchange throughout the trading day like individual stocks, while index funds can only be bought and sold for the price set at the end of the trading day.
If you want your investments to make a difference outside your investment portfolio as well, you can consider impact investing. Impact investing is an investment style where you choose investments based on your values. For example, some environmental funds only include companies with low carbon emissions. Others include companies with more women in leadership positions.
» Curious about other types of investments? Learn about real estate investment trusts, futures, options and alternative investments.
While you may think of other things as investments (your home, cars or art, for example), those typically aren’t considered part of an investment portfolio.
4. Determine the best asset allocation for you
So you know you want to invest in mostly funds, some bonds and a few individual stocks, but how do you decide exactly how much of each asset class you need? The way you split up your portfolio among different types of assets is called your asset allocation, and it’s highly dependent on your risk tolerance.
You may have heard recommendations about how much money to allocate to stocks versus bonds. Commonly cited rules of thumb suggest subtracting your age from 100 or 110 to determine what portion of your portfolio should be dedicated to stock investments. For example, if you’re 30, these rules suggest 70% to 80% of your portfolio allocated to stocks, leaving 20% to 30% of your portfolio for bond investments. In your 60s, that mix shifts to 50% to 60% allocated to stocks and 40% to 50% allocated to bonds.
» Read more: Simple portfolios to get you to your retirement goals
When you’re creating a portfolio from scratch, it can be helpful to look at model portfolios to give you a framework for how you might want to allocate your own assets. Take a look at the examples below to get a sense of how aggressive, moderate and conservative portfolios can be constructed.