A portfolio is the set of assets in which a person or company invests. There are thousands of assets at your disposal and each one has different characteristics and purposes, which makes creating an investment portfolio quite difficult. Therefore, it is important to have a strategy that fits your investor profile.
>>Discover your investment strategy<<
Steps to Build your Portfolio
Here are the steps to build your portfolio from scratch:
1. Get Your Brokerage Account Ready
>>What is an Investment Broker?<<|>>Top 5 Free Investment Brokers<<
1.1 Pick an Investment Broker
- For US investors, we recommend Robinhood.com (click for one Free stock)
- For EU investors, we recommend eToro.com (click for Free signup)
-> They offer 0% commission investing, no or low minimum deposits, a simple and powerful platform, and a wide variety of securities.
1.2 Create the account
- Follow the broker registration steps. They may ask for the following, among other things:
- Identification document (ID or Passport)
- Proof that you live at the address you have indicated
- Sign and accept certain agreements and legal documents (standard)
- Submit the account application in their app or on their site.
- You will receive an email within one business day (may vary) confirming your approval or asking for further information.
1.3 Deposit your investment amount
- Link up your bank account (don’t worry, it’s totally secure)
- Deposit the amount of money you want to invest
2. Build your portfolio
Enter this portfolio allocation in the table below:
- Enter the amount you want to invest (for example, $ 10,000) in the upper-right cell.
- Insert each asset you want your portfolio to include:
- Asset name (eg Apple Inc.)
- Asset ticker (eg AAPL)
- Look up the asset’s ticker on Yahoo! Finance and enter its current share price (eg, $135) in the corresponding box in the Price per Share column.
- Enter the desired asset allocation (percentage of your total investment amount you want to allocate towards the asset, eg 30%)
- Repeat the previous step for all the assets you wish to invest in the rows below.
Adjust the broker requirements:
- Fractional Shares: if your broker allows you to invest in fractional shares (pieces of stocks), select “Yes”, otherwise, select “No”.
- Minimum Amount Per Order: insert your broker’s minimum investment amount (eg $50 per order)
Review the final result of your portfolio:
- The Number of Shares and Value to Invest columns will show how your portfolio should look according to the Investment Amount and the Allocation you have chosen.
- The Number of Shares indicates how many shares you can buy of each asset to achieve the desired allocation (eg 10 AAPL shares)
- Value of Investment shows the money amount to invest (number of shares times the price per share, eg $1,350 value)
- The Cash line shows the amount of money that would be leftover when your portfolio is completed.
- If the cash is positive, you would have some excess cash for future investments.
- If there is no cash leftover, you would be all invested.
- If the cash is negative, you would need that amount of cash to complete your portfolio (at a minimum).