This is a business method used by many companies to safeguard their earnings. There’s a reason that manufacturers have separate product lines and stores carry a variety of items: it protects their profits. If one item has a seasonal decrease in demand or is a total failure, but the rest of the goods do well, they may still be profitable.

It’s a form of diversification. And just as diversification is essential in the business world, it’s also crucial for your investing portfolio.

The main objective of diversification isn’t to maximize profits; it’s to reduce risk. When you diversify your portfolio, you decrease the danger of suffering major losses if a few of your investments perform poorly. Continue reading to learn more about the advantages of diversification, as well as a step-by-step tutorial for diversifying your own portfolio.

The determination of whether a given investment or portfolio is suitable for you might be impacted by the potential for it to lose money. Beyond this definition, risk may be divided into many categories:

What business or government entity are you looking to invest in (often through equities) or lend money to (often via bonds)? Is it a high, moderate, or low risk of bankruptcy?

Volatility risk: On average, how many losing years will the specific asset that you’re considering investing in have? Stocks for large businesses have an average three-year loss period.

How difficult would it be to withdraw your cash back if you needed the cash to cover an unforeseen expenditure?

Interest rate risk: How would a rise or decline in interest rates affect your investment? As interest rates climb, bond values typically decrease.

Inflation risk: Is your portfolio’s rate of return vulnerable to being outpaced by inflation? This might be the case for portfolios that are entirely invested in cash equivalents.

All investments involve some level of risk.

However, if you prioritize safety, bank or credit union deposit accounts are the way to go (savings accounts, CDs, money market accounts, etc.). Because the federal government shields them up to $250,000, they provide the closest thing to an investment “guarantee” available.

Diversification is the process of having a variety of assets in order to reduce risk and volatility.

Here are some common diversification strategies:

Diversification: Holding shares in several firms so that your portfolio isn’t severely affected if one stock drops or goes bankrupt.

To diversify your portfolio, you should buy equities from a number of sectors (technology, healthcare, energy, consumer staples).

Diversification by size: Small-cap, mid-cap, and large-cap firms are all examples of this.

Diversification: Investing in a variety of domestic and foreign equities is known as international diversification.

Diversification in the asset class: Moving beyond stock and bond funds to invest in alternative assets such as real estate, commodities, private equity, and cash.

The fewer identical securities you own, the less of a chance you’ll have of suffering a significant loss in any year.

Unfortunately, the opportunity for significant losses frequently goes with the potential for significant gains when it comes to investments. Diversification’s advantages are generally offset by lower returns.

Consider the following scenario: a recent study, based on historical data stretching back to 1970, compared the performance of three hypothetical portfolios:

Conservative: 30% stocks, 50% bonds, 20% cash

Moderate: 60% stocks, 30% bonds, 10% cash

Aggressive: 80% stocks, 15% bonds, 5% cash

The prudent portfolio would be the clear winner if your only aim was to avoid losses. The maximum one-year loss it experienced was 14%, compared with 32.3% for the moderate and a whopping 44.4 percent for the aggressive.

However, when annualized returns were calculated for each portfolio, the conservative increased 8.1%, the moderate 9.4% and the aggressive 10%.

Although the figures are quite similar, there are some minor variations. They may not appear to be significant over a 40-year investment period. For example, if each portfolio had started with $10,000, their accounts would have been as follows:

Conservative: $389,519

Moderate: $676,126

Aggressive: $892,028

Riskier investments frequently have greater potential rewards. As diversifying does, smoothing out the risks means there are no devastating drops – but also no thrilling rises. Most investors are prepared to make this tradeoff.