Apr 21 2008

Sector Allocation of my Portfolio

Investing Sectors

As an active investor who buys individual securities, I need to make sure I am very diversified to minimize individual security risk. I have built a strong asset allocation model based on a great deal of research. I still have some work to do to meet my target allocations. However, as my recent portfolio performance has shown I am heavily weighted in financial stocks and will need to shortly turn my attention to my sector allocation.

According to Investopedia, here is the definition of a sector:

Sectors are a broader classification than industries, although some companies (especially more modern ones) can make a case for being “counted” in several different sectors. Companies within the same sector tend to have relatively high correlations in their rate of revenue and earnings growth, stock price performance, and earnings forecasts - especially over short- and medium-term time periods.

A diversified stock portfolio should hold stocks across most, if not all, sectors. Market weightings of sectors can be found by looking at the composition of a broad index like the S&P 500.

I ran my own portfolio through a sector analysis and confirmed that I am still heavily weighted in banking stocks. As you can see I dod have a good cross section represented but the weighting is very skewed.

Sector AllocationClick to Enlarge

My goal will be to have no more that 10% of my portfolio weighted to any one sector at a given time. This will allow for proper diversification and risk reduction. In addition, I will focus on finding the strongest stocks in each sector that of course have a track record of increasing dividends. Over time this will allow for a strong and well-performing portfolio.

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5 Comments on this post

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  1. GrowYourFunds wrote:

    The Impact of Dividends in a Choppy Market…

    Today I have a very special post for readers. Jeremy from TheDividendGuyBlog agreed to put together a post regarding the power of dividends in a tough market like the one we are currently in. Jeremy runs a great blog that……

    April 21st, 2008 at 7:10 pm
  2. Carnival of Personal Finance #150 wrote:

    [...] Dividend Guy details his sector allocation of his portfolio. It looks a little overweighted in the banking and financial areas if you ask [...]

    April 28th, 2008 at 6:57 am
  1. Jeremy said:

    One thing I think you should keep in mind is that the Financial Services make up about 20% of the S&P 500. While certainly the S&P isn’t the end all be all of indexes, it does give a good cross section of the economy and a guide to allocation since it is a weighted average.

    The second biggest allocation on the S%P is Healthcare at 13.4%, so it looks like that is your biggest weakness, and with Pfizer currently returning over 6%, it seems like right up your alley.

    April 21st, 2008 at 8:14 am
  2. Mark @ TheLocoMono said:

    What’s the difference between diversified financials and banking?

    April 21st, 2008 at 7:44 pm
  3. Mike Gwilliam said:

    Quick question - what did you use to run the sector analysis of your portfolio and produce that great graph? Is there some automated tool that I can use (I’m in the UK with mostly UK stocks)

    Thanks

    June 26th, 2009 at 7:39 am

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