1D·

Portfolio, 2nd milestone

I am now invested with a total of € 20.3 thousand, having added € 540 to my $FWRG (-0.9%) added to my account. It's not even a full year since I started, but I'm holding on to what's working. So far I'm at +17.6 % MWR YTD and +10.2 % TWR YTD. The structure is simple: a broad ETF core that I pay into every month and a small satellite segment with a few individual stocks like $ASML (-0.85%) , $NVDA (-2.62%) and $GOOGL (-1.58%) as well as a very small speculative position, which includes $IREN (-6.83%) which jumped after the Microsoft news. I stopped P2P lending this year and parked the liquidity in regulated ETFs.

My DCA has been more or less consistent. In some months I invested more, in others less. Over the next 2 to 3 months, I don't expect to add much more than €500 per month because I'm saving for a house down payment. Houses here often go for at least €20k over the asking price, sometimes even €50k to €60k.

I'm not only the first in my family to have an MSc, but also a PhD, and I'm learning about investing as I go. My subject is not finance, but it's hard to overlook how important financial education is today. We no longer live in the 80s or 90s where a single income could comfortably cover a house, vacation and a good pension. Basic investment habits seem like a necessary foundation today.

What I'm learning is primarily behavioral. Consistently paying into the core via DCA helps. Position sizes are more important than being right on every trade. Tracking MWR and TWR in parallel separates timing effects from the actual performance. In the short term, my goal remains to maximize growth with a stable all-world core. I only add to individual stocks when the prices are right.

If you have a similar strategy, I would be happy to receive suggestions on the structure. Would you expand the global ETF core further or add targeted tilts such as quality, equal weight or regional focuses to reduce concentration risks without diluting growth?

2 Comments

The basic structure looks solid. Your satellites give you a certain degree of de-diversification in your portfolio. Your selected stocks are more volatile than the index. I estimate that you have built in a 1.1-1.2 leverage on the Allworld through the individual stocks. The overall performance also speaks in favor of this.

You can do it. Personally, I think it makes limited sense. The original idea of core-satellite is not to increase risk, but to reduce it. In my opinion, uncorrelated assets as satellites would make more sense. Unfortunately, very few people here on GQ understand this, but you do have a PhD. 😅

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HB@DKHBMD

23H

@Epi Thanks for the well-founded comment. I use a core-satellite setup in the sense of a growth bias, not in the classic way which mainly smooths out fluctuations. The core is a broad global equity base, which I expand when prices and cash flow allow. Around this, I run small, well-considered satellite positions, where I consciously accept more volatility in order to achieve possible additional returns. To prevent this tendency from dominating the entire portfolio, I work with practical guard rails instead of rigid rules: Each individual position remains only a limited proportion of total assets, the combined weight of the chip and AI hardware theme has an upper limit, the speculative pocket segment remains small, and I keep a modest defensive component with insurers and hedged gold as shock absorbers. I only rebalance if these guard rails are clearly exceeded or the market gives me a convincing reason to rotate so that I don't constantly tinker with the portfolio. In the future, I could add a small quality or equal weight tilt to reduce the megacap concentration without diluting the growth profile; however, I only do this if it suits the market situation and not according to a fixed timetable.

The bottom line is a deliberately higher equity beta, but with moderation: position sizes, topic caps and some ballast keep the risk in check. If the environment changes or individual segments grow beyond my comfort zone, I shift weight back to the core.

Eheh and the PhD reference: That wasn't a boast. I'm the first in my family with that degree and I work on the "poorer" side of the tech world in climate, non-profit and R&D. I mentioned it because I'm pursuing financial literacy as a path to social mobility, not to say how smart I am. Thanks for the feedback.

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