All successful gardeners will understand the need to regularly tend their plants, shrubs and lawns in order to ensure a garden can flourish. And, for investors, taking a similar approach with their financial affairs can also bear fruit by ensuring their investment portfolios don’t become neglected and, as a result, underperform.
Weeding, sowing…
As with a garden, your investment portfolio requires regular careful attention in order to ensure it continues to grow. Typical tasks include weeding out any perennially underperforming funds and switching to potentially more profitable ones and, for those with new money to invest, sowing the seeds of your portfolio with carefully selected additional new investments.
…pruning and trimming
Another important task is pruning. This will ensure your investment portfolio stays balanced and continues to fully reflect both your current and long-term financial goals as well as any changes in your appetite for risk. It may also require taking profits at certain points in time to ensure you are using any potential tax allowances.
However carefully your initial range of investments were selected, your portfolio will also inevitably get out of shape over time. This creates an ongoing need to regularly review the allocation of different asset classes, such as cash, equities, bonds and property. And such a review may result in the trimming back of certain assets in order to restore balance to your portfolio.
Help is at hand
Many people now seek professional help to create and maintain their garden and it’s obviously wise for investors to do the same thing. Indeed, with ongoing political and economic uncertainties causing increased market volatility, there has arguably never been a more important time to seek professional financial advice. Keep in touch, so that we can help you keep your investment portfolio in full bloom.
The value of investments can go down as well as up and you may not get back the full amount you invested.
The past is not a guide to future performance and past performance may not necessarily be repeated.