Rate My Portfolio: Why Yours Is a Mess
You think you hold five funds. Look inside them and three of the five own roughly the same things. The 'diversified' portfolio is actually one bet, repeated.
What a sensible UK portfolio looks like
| Holding | Allocation | Role | Typical OCF |
|---|---|---|---|
| Global equity tracker | 80-100% | Core ~3,500 stocks | 0.13-0.22% |
| Global bond fund | 0-20% | Volatility damper | 0.10-0.20% |
| UK home-bias tilt | 0-15% | Currency hedge | 0.07-0.10% |
| Individual stocks | 0% | Already in the tracker | N/A |
Three funds maximum. Total ongoing costs around 0.10-0.25%.
Key takeaways
Most "rate my portfolio" posts show the same five mistakes: overlapping funds, individually held stocks already inside those funds, no asset allocation, performance chasing, and zero understanding of what they actually own.
Owning five funds does not mean you own a diversified portfolio. If three of them are 60% the same US large-caps, you own one fund three times with extra fees.
Buying Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia individually when you also hold a global tracker means you are deliberately overweighting stocks that are already the largest holdings in the fund.
A boring two or three fund portfolio (global equity, optionally bonds, optionally a small home-bias tilt) beats almost every "creative" newbie portfolio over a working life.