What is the difference between buying a handful of stocks versus building a portfolio?  Technically speaking, buying two stocks is a portfolio, however we all know that randomly buying stocks in random amounts cannot be considered portfolio management, or even wisdom. I believe this is a significant reason why many people entrust a stranger to build a portfolio for them (for an ongoing fee).   

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     The problem with sending your money to be managed by a stranger is that this is your hard-earned money.  It is very easy to “set it and forget it.”- with very little thought about what is happening with your invested assets.  Some of the benefits of choosing your own stocks is that you can avoid holding certain companies for ethical reasons.  You can also build around companies and sectors that you are proud to own and where you can apply your personal knowledge of an industry. This course is a tutorial on how to build an optimal stock portfolio based on the stocks and sectors you choose.

     The intended audience of this course is anyone who lacks a formal education in portfolio management. The video lessons walk you through each step and show you exactly what to do so that you can build your customized portfolio and then optimize it. The average investor will not come up with this strategy, in fact the theory won a Nobel Prize in Economics. However, the steps of the theory are very easy if someone shows you exactly what to do. I think anyone who has the ability to complete a high school degree can successfully complete this course.

     The impact of Covid led to a new class of new investors with spare time on their hands. I saw many comments on social media from people admitting they lacked understanding and were going to Facebook, hoping to find good advice. Thankfully, we can all grow our personal skill set and get to the next level of understanding. I hope to show you how.

     A typical Master of Finance program will discuss the extensive academic research that shows how actively managed funds (the ones that charge you the high fees) are rarely able to outperform passive investing. This means, making lots of trades and constantly adjusting your portfolio is not the key to investing. Most of us do not have time for that anyways. This has caused people who have no background in finance to wonder if they could learn how to invest through long-term, buy and hold strategies. The reason we will look at buy and hold strategies is because you already have a busy life and you do not need, or want, to spend multiple hours a week constantly monitoring stocks throughout the day. A buy and hold strategy is designed to build a portfolio that requires minimal maintenance. This is why we call it a passive strategy. In this course, we will look at how to build a portfolio that requires an adjustment, called rebalancing, approximately once a year after the portfolio is set up. We will use the same excel sheet from this course to build your portfolio and we will also use it to rebalance your portfolio in the future. I will give you a template that simplifies creating your portfolio and show you how to adjust it in the years to come.

     Often people find investing to be intriguing and fun; as they watch their money go to work for them. It is empowering to manage the risk and reward of our own portfolio. It keeps us informed of our spending habits and better connected to the changes in the business environment.

     After I learned the fundamentals of portfolio management from a top 100 Master of Finance program, I decided to make a course to help people understand the fundamentals of portfolio management. Investing is empowering. So, maybe you want to learn how to build your own portfolio through this course.

Before purchasing this course, some common questions investors have include the following:

• Which types of stocks do I want to hold now and one year from now?
• What combination of my stocks work best together?
• Should I invest more money in certain stocks? If yes, what are the right percentages to assign to each stock?
• What combinations of bonds and stocks will help me achieve my desired returns without being overly exposed to losses?
• Am I a high or low risk investor? How can I measure this?
• How can I calculate the riskiness of the portfolio I created?
• How can I make adjustments to my portfolio so that it meets my risk and return goals?
• How can I build a manageable portfolio of approximately twenty assets so that I don’t have to track an overwhelming number of companies?
• What If I don’t have a background in mathematics or finance?

     I will be covering all of these questions in this course. Excel will do 99% of the heavy lifting for us. You can succeed in this course as long as your can still add, subtract, multiply, and divide- which I know you can do. We just need to implement a handful of calculations and tools that come standard with Excel. I will give you every formula and show you how to enter it properly into Excel. My goal is to remove the potential headache and get to the fun part. The fun part is seeing all the pieces come together. I make it easy because as a student there were always these little questions that professors seemed to skip over. I tried to eliminate all of these “little questions” along the way. In reality, these little differences in the calculation are important. I don’t want you to feel confused, so I walk through the process from A-Z. We start with the theory and then go step by step in Excel to come up with the amount of money to put into each stock. Once you understand the concepts, you will be able to make adjustments at any time, including when you rebalance your portfolio every year.

     In the beginning, you can invest a small amount of money, in fact, the principals we will learn apply to any investment size. You also can go through the course and make a “paper portfolio” where instead of investing real money, you simply track the gains or losses that would have occurred over time. As you gain confidence, you can begin investing real money according to the risk adjusted portfolio that you create. You may find you enjoy having a hobby that makes you smarter and hopefully richer. But even if you decide to have the professionals manage most of your money, at the very least, you will have a better understanding of what they should be doing with your money.

Included in the course:

• 20 Video Lessons (total run time of 3 hours) that start from zero and walk you through each step of the process.  We will start with the concept behind the Markowitz model and why he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for this superb idea. I show you how to start with a blank Excel sheet if you want to start from scratch.
• A Portfolio Creation Template that has notes, comments, and directions that help you stay organized and enjoy the process. I recommend you use my template rather than starting from a blank sheet.
• A “Video Partner” Excel file (not the template) that uses the same stocks that I am using in the videos to assist your learning.  You can open the file and walk through the course with me. It’s an easy way to learn how to build a portfolio by watching the video and interacting with the “Video Partner” Excel File.  By following the steps with me, you can see exactly what to do. You can click into the cells and see the formulas. Then, you can then go back to your Excel sheet you are building with on the template and do the same process with your stocks and bonds. If you ever get confused- no problem! Just jump back over to the “Video Partner” example file and follow along with the video until you understand what I am doing.
• As soon as you are ready to build a portfolio with your particular stocks, start by using the template file provided and start inserting the tickers/names of your stocks. The template saves you a lot of headache has the basic structures; the column headers, the place holders, the labels, and even pop-up comments to guide you along the way.
• Comments below the videos are enabled to add another dimension of clarity. This will show my answers for any questions that have been asked by previous members.

What you need for the course:

• An internet connection and access to Microsoft Excel
• A curiosity of how to approach investing
• You can learn all you need to know by following the videos and using my “Video Partner” file. That is to say, you don’t have to pick all your stocks before coming into the course. You can learn the method and see if you want to manage your own money by watching the course videos and using the “Video Partner” file. Within three hours, you will know if you think managing your own money is something you would like to start doing. If it is, then you can take a few weeks and research some sectors and individual firms. When you have a list of 30 or more stocks or sector ETF’s you can come back to the course, download the “Template” file and start building your own portfolio.

If you want to build your own portfolio, you will also need:

• A list of 30 or more stocks or ETF’s that you see as possible investments.   This could come from your own research or you will gain some ideas during the first lesson about how to pick sectors given the current economic cycle.
• You will need a brokerage account that will allow you to buy and sell financial products like stocks. I will give you some tips on which ones are best on the course landing page if you decide you want to enroll.