It's moronic Monday, the Wednesday edition, your chance to ask any of those questions that you're embarrassed to ask in real life.

I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out what should be in a "diversified portfolio". Here's what I currently have:

% Type Symbol Name
15% bonds VBTLX Vanguard Total Bond Market
30% us stocks VTSAX Vanguard Total Stock Market Index
15% int stocks VTIAX Vanguard Total International Stock Index
10% real-estate VNQ Vanguard REIT Index
20% div stocks VYM Vanguard High Dividend Yield
5% small-cap VBR Vanguard Small-Cap Value
5% mid-cap VOE Vanguard Mid-Cap Value

My goal is simply "have a diversified portfolio to grow my money". There is no time horizon or further goal here...I may use this for retirement, I may sell some of it at a peak to buy a house/etc. I have a separate retirement fund which is fully invested into VFORX (Vanguard 2040 retirement fund).

About me:

  • I'm 32, and I contribue the max to my 401k and IRA every year. That retirement fund is completely in a "target year" retirement fund I don't touch. (The allocation above is just for my secondary portfolio.)
  • I have no goals for this money other than "grow my wealth". I may use it for retirement, I may sell parts of it at a high to buy a house, a new car, etc, whatever. I can hold onto the investments as long as I need, but I may want parts of it at any time (if they are up, I'll not sell at a loss).
  • I would consider my risk tolerance "moderate". I do like to keep 15% in bonds (instead of 90-10), even though I could potentially hold this until retirement. Similarly I like having 20% in dividend yielding returns as hopefully something that steadily adds to the portfolio (rather than going for higher risk/reward with all of it).
  • I add about 20k per year to this portfolio, mostly buying into whatever is at a low, and use that influx money to re-balance instead of selling what's highest.

Questions:

  1. Does this allocation seem reasonable for my risk tolerance level and my (admittedly) fuzzy goal of growing wealth?
  2. Specifically what do you think of the small/mid cap investments here? I don't really know what I'm doing in that part of the portfolio, I just see that a lot of people have that added and did the same thing...
  3. Is there any obvious weakness here I should plug?
/r/investing Thread