personal finance

It's been a rough month for stocks. Take these steps to safeguard your portfolio


Having a healthy mix of investments will limit how much your overall portfolio goes down when stocks take a hit.

While you may think you’re diversified because you are invested in an S&P 500 fund, that is actually a “heavy bet on technology these days,” Dhillon said.

If, in addition, your portfolio has a technology exchange traded fund or a single stock position in a large technology name, that could be too much exposure, depending on how much risk you want to take on.

“Those types of positions, that’s OK, as long as you know and you did that willingly and you understand the risks that come along with it,” Dhillon said.

Now could be a good time to take a step back and ask yourself, “What does that do for my risk profile and am I OK with it?” Dhillon said.

Make sure you have the right mix for you across sectors, industries and market capitalization.

If you’re close to or in retirement, you may want to consider tweaking the safety portion of your portfolio.

For many investors, that is a 40 percent allocation to bonds. But you may not want to hold onto a 30-year bond, particularly as interest rates are poised to go up, said Jeffrey Levine, CEO and director of financial planning at BluePrint Wealth Alliance. Instead, you could add in cash or other short-term bonds.

“Typically bonds are a flight to safety,” Levine said. “But if interest rates continue to rise, that flight to safety may not be nearly as safe as people think.”



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