Why I Became My Own Portfolio Manager

What fun is it to invest when no one is actually educating you on your investments that you can't touch for a long time? After all, it is your money and you're putting it aside in hopes of it's value rising over time.

I hated the lack of transparency that there was when my financial advisor held my money in investments back in 2015. It just felt like their advice was not tailored to my lifestyle or interests at all, but at the time I went along with it because right out of pharmacy school I was working too much to care about my investments. Most portfolios seemed to be center focused around the individuals life expectancy but really how the diversification and fund selection process goes is all up to the firm you're paying.

I had a good portion of my paycheck going to into this cookie-cutter brokerage account full of mutual funds (yuck!), and for someone who wasn't good at saving money (but great at spending it), this form of automatic investing wasn't very incentivising to me! I occasionally withdrew from the account, which was awful, but my student loans plus growing bills required me to do so in order to pay for my posh lifestyle. Eventually, by late 2016 I realized it was pointless to pay the ridiculous fees I was being charged just for them to hold my money in very illiquid vehicles, so I closed my account with that advisory firm.

Just before I liquidated that account for good, I had stumbled upon a robo-investing app that caught my attention because it was a personal, judgement-free investment account that could automatically invest the spare change from my everyday purchases. It truly was as good as it sounded and with time I added additional recurring investments to the pool of fractional investments I wasn't even noticing come from my checking account. This was the best way for me to learn about what was really happening with my money with their user-friendly app and educational tools, while also watching the progress of its growth. Once I was clever enough to realize that the app's portfolio options were limited to the broadest base, lowest expense ratio ETFs (in a scope of thousands of ETF products) and had a flat $1-3 user fee per month just for them to allocate fractional shares into a portfolio pie of just 5-7 slices, it was time to start a new "fun" investment account on my own to test out the waters.

To pay the fee, or not to pay the fee?

I will tell you, putting money aside into a diversified portfolio passively for as long as you can to allow for compound interest via dollar-cost averaging is the best way to invest disposable income without the worry. This can also be achieved on your own now that retail investors have access to funds & fund products that can be traded on the exchanges!

It was only within the last decade (2010s -2020s) that retail investors gained access to the bundled ETF products that track vast indices of all industries. These products resemble mutual funds but can be purchased & sold on the secondary market exchanges. In other words, with just one low cost fund you can have ownership in hundreds to thousands of companies that make up a particular index (such as the S&P 500)!

Investing was such a taboo topic and seemed reserved for elites & institutions deemed knowledgable enough. Until it wasn't.

Online brokerage firms allowing individuals access to the secondary market for little to no commission fees make it possible to manage your own investment portfolio. You can pay to have automatic investments model a diversified template portfolio with pre-selected ETFs, or simply curate your own portfolio from scratch with no added fee. No matter you decide, its yours to play with!

The key is starting with a low multiple (like 1) when buying shares for the first time. Overtime, you will become familiar with the charts and may feel comfortable making larger trades/investments to your portfolio, but don't expect anything huge at first if you dont want to lose sight of your portfolio!

I have had so much fun researching different ETFs over the last few years, and giving many ticker symbols a try with my money! Through trial & error, I figured out which ETFs I wanted to "flirt with/marry/or kill" within my portfolio. With the availability of leveraged ETFs, it is possible to trade daily for capital gains while investing for the longer term within the same portfolio using more stable ETFs.

Stay tuned for more on my day trading and portfolio management in future posts!

XO Hope