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Why Diversification is the Key to a Successful Investment Strategy?

Why Diversification is the Key to a Successful Investment Strategy?

Akansha and Ritwik have been married for 4 years. They have many shared interests, and from vacation destinations to playlists, they mostly end up choosing the same things. However, when it came to investing, their ideas often clashed. Akansha preferred to stick to what she knew. Her first choice was always big-name companies that came with strong past performance.

Ritwik, on the other hand, believed in spreading his bets. An advocate of diversification, Ritwik’s portfolio had a little bit of everything, including stocks, bonds, ETFs, and even gold. Akansha found this to be too complicated; however, a recent dip in the market changed the way she thought. While her concentrated portfolio took a hit, Ritwik’s diversified strategy softened the blow.

What happened to Akansha isn’t really uncommon. There are a lot of investors who invest in similar assets in order to be safe in the market. In this quest for safety, however, they overlook the golden rule of investing, which is diversification. It is important for every investor to understand that diversification is the key to a successful investment portfolio. Read on to know why.

Why Diversification is the Key to a Successful Investment Strategy?

When it comes to balancing risk and reward, diversification of assets is considered to be a tried and tested strategy. It is the practice where you spread your investment in such a way that your assets are not exposed to just any one type of asset, segment, industry, geographic region, etc. It allows you to reduce the volatility of your portfolio.

The idea is to hold a range of investment plans, so that a poor-performing asset can be offset by a better-performing one. This overall leads to a more consistent return. Simply put, diversification aims to invest in assets that are not correlated with one another as far as possible. Let us take a look at what makes diversification in a portfolio so crucial.

  1. The aim of diversification is to reduce the overall risk in your investment portfolio. There are two types of risks in investing: one that can’t be avoided (systematic risk) and one that can (unsystematic risk). Diversification mainly helps manage the second type by spreading your investment plans across different areas instead of putting everything in one place.
  2. When your money is heavily invested in a single asset type, sector, or theme, your portfolio becomes more sensitive to market swings. This can hurt your returns, especially when things don’t go as expected.
  3. A diversified portfolio naturally adjusts over time. If one asset or sector grows too much, it can prompt a rebalancing. This helps you avoid overexposure during market highs and keeps some funds ready for use during market downturns.
  4. By spreading your investments across different sectors, themes, and time periods, you increase your chances of capturing more opportunities. While Ritwik’s portfolio had a variety of sectors. This was something that totally lacked in Akansha’s. Her concentrated portfolio was too focused on similar sectors.
  5. Diversification can also improve your risk-adjusted returns, which means getting better returns for the amount of risk you're taking. Today, it's not just about how much return you make, but how efficiently you earn it, considering the risks.
  6. Because Ritwik’s portfolio was diversified, it helped soften the blow during tough market phases. When stocks and bonds performed poorly, as always, gold held up well. Having some gold in his portfolio reduced Ritwaik’s overall losses during the fluctuations.
  7. Lastly, diversification plays a key role in asset allocation, how you divide your money among different investment plans and types. Studies show that your choice of asset mix can influence up to 80% of your portfolio's performance. So, diversification helps you keep a balanced and smart investing approach.

How to Diversify Your Investment Portfolio?

Here are the main components of diversification:

Diversify across assets

This is probably the first step to diversifying. Rather than investing only in equities or gold, experts suggest that you invest in a mixture of assets that includes equities, debt funds, and gold, so that one can outperform the other in varying market conditions.

Diversify across sectors

While you need to choose diverse products like equities, debt, etc, you also need to go across sectors as well. Different patterns are followed by different industries such as banking, infrastructure, IT, metals, pharma, etc.

Diversify across tenure

Some returns are more sensitive to changes in interest rates. When you spread your investments across products that come with different maturity dates, you can maintain a consistent inflow of returns.

Diversify across countries

Over the years, investing in foreign markets has become more and more popular. The emerging ETF, exchange traded funds, market can bring growth opportunities.

In Conclusion

Diversification isn’t really about maximising your returns; rather, the goal is to limit or mitigate the impact of volatility. Even if you feel you’ve invested in the best investment plans, it should also be kept in mind that while no strategy or technique can ensure 100% safety when it comes to market-linked returns, diversification is probably the most effective way to minimise the risk. If you find it overwhelming to manage a diverse portfolio, especially if you wish to have multiple holdings, it may be best to seek professional help. Jio Insurance Broking can be your companion and guide at every step of your investment journey.

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