The theme this week on the Retirement Quick Tips Podcast is: Why Your Stock Portfolio Is More Risky Than You Think

The S&P 500 is a common gauge for the stock market and chances are that a large cap mutual fund or index fund that you own is modeled after the S&P 500. You may think that the S&P 500 is pretty well diversified. In fact, as the name indicates, there are about 500 companies in the index. But your money is not split up evenly among those 500 companies, because the S&P 500 is a market weight index, meaning the largest companies make up the largest portion of the index and end up driving much of the performance - for better or for worse. 

But just how concentrated is the S&P 500? Just the 2 largest companies by market cap, make up nearly 13% of the weight of the index. Combined, the top 6 companies in the S&P 500 - Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Tesla, Google & Facebook - all big tech stocks by the way, make up a quarter of the index weighting. Roughly 25% of your portfolio if you’re in a S&P 500 index fund is driven by the performance of just 6 stocks! 

Which brings us to an important question: How concentrated is your own portfolio? How much of your portfolio is invested in big tech names and is it something you should be concerned about or something you should adjust? 

If you send me a list of your top portfolio holdings with the dollar amounts invested in each, I’ll send you a portfolio X Ray analysis report that will show you how concentrated your portfolio really is. 

Just send me an email - [email protected] with a list of your top holdings, including $ amounts invested, and I’ll send you a free portfolio X Ray analysis. 

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening! My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the Retirement Quick Tips podcast.

----------

>>> Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2DI2LSP

>>> Subscribe on Amazon Alexa: https://amzn.to/2xRKrCs

>>> Visit the podcast page: https://truenorthra.com/podcast/ 

----------

Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance