Diversify across sectors to cut risk

Article Excerpt

One of our keys to successful investing is to make sure your holdings are spread out across most if not all of the five main economic sectors—Resources & Commodities, Manufacturing & Industry, Consumer, Finance, and Utilities. That way, you avoid overloading yourself with stocks that are about to slump simply because of industry conditions or changes in investor fashion. By diversifying across the sectors, you also increase your chances of stumbling upon a market superstar—a stock that does two to three or more times better than the market average. These stocks come along every year. By nature, their appearance is unpredictable; if you could routinely spot them ahead of time, you’d quickly acquire a large proportion of all the money in the world, and of course, nobody ever does that. that…