Welcome to ETFExclusive™ and STOCKExclusive™, the STAAR™ Financial Advisors ETF Portfolio-Building Service! We have created this site to help you create your own portfolios of Exchange Traded Funds and/or Stocks easily and intelligently. In essence you can now build your own "Fund of Funds," Stock Portfolio or a combination of both. In the new world of ETFs you can use strategies and techniques previously available only to hedge funds, mutual funds and managers of large portfolios.
As a Platinum Member, you have access to STAAR™ Models, which have been created by STAAR™ Financial Advisors, Inc. Just click below or on "Portfolio Models -- STAAR™ ETF Model Portfolios" on the left side of this page. These models are a good place to start before building your own.
Whether you are a beginning investor or a seasoned professional, our ETFExclusive™ and STOCKExclusive™ services can help you design and trade your portfolios more effectively. Specifically we will help you in the following areas:
- Knowledge
- Risk Management
- Diversification
- Trends
- Portfolio Design
- Decision-making
- Performance Tracking
Current ETFExclusive™ Models & Commentary
Current STOCKExclusive™ Models & Commentary
YOUR MODELS
Getting Started
We suggest you print this section and use it as a reference. We also suggest you create an ETFExclusive™ and STOCKExclusive™ folders in your computer and/or a physical file or binder notebook with the following sections:
SFAMoney Portfolios Site Information
My Portfolios
My Brokerage Statements
ETFExclusive™ Models
STOCKExclusive™ Models
SFAMoney.com Educational Materials and Articles
3rd Party Articles, Information and Links
Step One: Familiarize yourself with the ETFExclusive™ and STOCKExclusive™ parts of the site. Visit each of the pages listed on the navigation bars.
Step Two: Complete the "What Kind of Investor Am I?" Questionnaire and "Risk and Expectations".
Step Three: Review the current STAAR Model Portfolios.
Step Four: Design a preliminary portfolio. Using the STAAR Portfolios as a guide, put together a preliminary list of ETFs in which you are interested. In the future we plan to provide a modelling tool that will allow you to design your portfolio on site. In the meantime, click here to download a simple Portfolio Spreadsheet to use. There are also many sources that allow you to design and track portfolios, some of which are free. Click here and look for Links Offering Free Portfolio Tracking.
You can design multiple portfolios for specific objectives. For instance, you might design a "balanced" portfolio for a college education fund that will need to be drawn on within 5-10 years. And you might design an "aggressive" portfolio for your Roth IRA that you won’t need for 20 years.
Step Five: Select a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 30 ETFs and/or a minimum of 15 and a maximum of 40 stocks for your Final Portfolio(s). Our opinion is that less than 10 ETFs provides too little diversification and more than 30 too much. Pay attention to "overlap" in funds. Overlap is where more than one of your funds owns the same stock or stocks. Individual stocks increase your risk exposure so we recommend a minimum of 20 stocks if you are not using ETFs among your holdings. There are a number of services, including brokerage firms that offer portfolio modelling tools that can help in examining overlap. (See our Links page for some) Or you can go to the ETF sponsor sites and examine their summaries and prospectuses.
Step Six: Monitor your portfolio(s) and keep on top of the markets. Sites such as Google Finance, Yahoo Finance and others offer the ability to create portfolios that can be tracked on a daily basis. Actual portfolios will be tracked on the brokerage site you choose to make actual trrades.
Step Seven: Return to SFAMoney.com regularly to get Model updates and commentary by André Weisbrod and other experts. You will receive email notices of content changes or important market and industry developments. |
