For a lot of people, investing is hard to get excited about, and even harder to start. There's a lot to learn, and it can feel like the whole thing was built for insiders. If you've invested before, chances are you fall into one of three camps:
“I'd rather figure it all out myself.”
“I just need a little guidance and I'm good.”
“Can someone please just take care of this for me?”
Wherever you land today, and it tends to change over the years, we can help. More on that in a bit.
This is where working with us pays off. Much of the value we add to your investment selection comes from our broker-dealer, LPL Financial. LPL's research teams comb the market and publish lists of acceptable investments, including but not limited to mutual funds, ETFs, and individual stocks, that we can use inside both advisory and brokerage accounts. Those lists run into the thousands of investments and fund managers. From there we go to work, using specialized tools to analyze those choices, confirm your portfolio is allocated properly, and make sure every holding fits your account's objective.
You don't have to figure any of this out alone. We give you hands-on, personal guidance to help you set your goals and work toward them. Here is how we help:
Understand the different types of investments and where each one fits in a balanced portfolio.
Pin down your financial goals, whether that's retirement, buying a home, funding a college education, starting your own business, or simply getting better at budgeting and paying down credit card debt.
Match an investment strategy to those goals, based on your risk tolerance and time frame.
Talk through professionally managed investment strategies that may be a fit for you.
Meet with you regularly to track your progress and adjust as life changes.
Portfolio Essentials
Nearly every portfolio is built from a handful of essential pieces. Understanding what each one does, and what it asks of you in return, is the first real step toward investing with confidence.
Stocks represent ownership. When you buy a share, you own a small piece of a company and a claim on its future earnings. Stocks carry the highest growth potential of the three, and the highest short-term risk. They tend to reward patience, which is why they usually belong to money you won't touch for years, like a retirement account with decades still to run.
Bonds are loans. When you buy a bond, you're lending money to a company or a government in exchange for regular interest and the return of your principal on a set date. Historically bonds have delivered steadier, more moderate returns than stocks, which makes them useful for goals in the middle distance and for steadying a portfolio as retirement draws closer.
Cash and cash equivalents, such as money market funds and Treasury bills, trade growth for stability. The returns are modest, but the value stays put. This is where money lives when you'll need it soon, like a down payment two years out, or when you simply want a quiet corner of the portfolio.
The pattern holds across all three: the greater the potential reward, the greater the risk you take on to reach for it. History makes that trade-off clear.
Historical Returns by Asset Type, 1985–2022
Average annualized return over roughly four decades. Higher potential reward has come hand in hand with higher risk.
Stocks8.00%
Government Bonds3.00%
Treasury Bills0.40%
Inflation (CPI)2.74%
Source: Callan, LLC 2023 and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Stocks represented by the S&P 500, government bonds by the Bloomberg US Aggregate Bond Index, cash by the 90-day Treasury bill, inflation by the Consumer Price Index. All indexes are unmanaged and cannot be invested in directly. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
You rarely have to buy those pieces one at a time. Two of the most common ways to own a whole basket at once are mutual funds and ETFs.
Mutual funds pool money from many investors and hand it to a professional manager who builds a basket of stocks, bonds, or both. A single purchase can spread your money across dozens or even hundreds of holdings, which makes diversification simple. Mutual funds are priced once a day, after the market closes.
Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) work on the same idea, a basket of many holdings in one investment, but they trade throughout the day like a stock and often carry lower costs. Both mutual funds and ETFs are convenient, widely used ways to own the essentials above without buying every stock or bond yourself.
Tax-Efficient Investing
It's not only what your investments earn. It's what you keep after taxes. Small, deliberate choices about where you hold each investment and when you buy or sell can add up to a meaningful difference over the years.
A few of the levers we use: asset location, which places tax-inefficient investments inside tax-advantaged accounts and tax-friendly ones where they belong; tax-loss harvesting, which can turn a market dip into a tax benefit; and account-type strategy, coordinating your taxable, tax-deferred, and tax-free accounts so that withdrawals down the road cost you less. We work alongside your CPA so the investment side and the tax side are pulling in the same direction.
What a Tax-Free Yield Is Really Worth
A tax-free investment paying 4% can put the same income in your pocket as a higher-yielding taxable one, and the higher your tax bracket, the more that break is worth. Here is the taxable yield you would need to match a 4% tax-free bond:
Tax Bracket
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
Equivalent Taxable Yield
4.71%
5.00%
5.33%
5.71%
6.15%
Hypothetical illustration. Taxable-equivalent yield = tax-free yield ÷ (1 − your tax rate). Municipal bond interest is generally exempt from federal income tax but may be subject to state or local taxes and the alternative minimum tax; not all municipal bonds are tax-free. This is not a recommendation of any specific security. Tax rates shown are for illustration only.
This information is educational and is not intended as tax advice. Please consult your CPA or tax professional regarding your individual situation.
Diversification
Spreading your money across many different holdings means no single company, industry, or country can sink your plan.
Diversification does not guarantee a profit or protect against loss in a declining market, but it remains one of the most dependable tools an investor has.
Diversification Happens on More Than One Level
A well-built portfolio doesn't just split your money between stocks and bonds. It spreads it across company sizes, investment styles, market sectors, and regions of the world, all at once. Here is one illustration of those layers working together.
Layer 1
By Asset Class
The foundation: growth assets balanced with steadier ones.
Stocks 65%
Bonds 20%
Real Estate 9%
Cash 6%
Layer 2
By Company Size & Style
Within the stock slice: large, mid, and small companies, across value and growth.
ValueBlendGrowthLarge162814Mid61011Small285
Shaded by share of stocks (%). Darker means more.
Layer 3
By Market Sector
Spread across the parts of the economy, so no single sector runs the show.
Technology22%
Financials18%
Industrials15%
Consumer14%
Healthcare10%
Energy & Other21%
Layer 4
By Region
And across the map, so one country's bad year isn't your whole story.
United States 72%
Europe 15%
Asia-Pacific 9%
Other 4%
Hypothetical illustration for education only. The figures, asset mix, styles, sectors, and regions shown do not represent any actual portfolio, client account, security, or its performance, and are not a recommendation or a prediction of results. Diversification does not guarantee a profit or protect against loss in a declining market. Your own plan is built around your goals and risk.
What Kind of Investor Are You?
Before you pick investments, it helps to know how much risk actually fits your life. There are two sides to it. Risk capacity is how much loss your plan can absorb and still reach its goals. Risk tolerance is how much bouncing around you can live with without losing sleep or making an emotional decision at the worst possible moment. A sound portfolio respects both.
Answer five quick questions and you'll land in one of five investor profiles, each with a sample mix of stocks, bonds, and cash. Think of it as a starting point for a conversation, not a recommendation.
Question 1
How many years until you retire, or need this money?
Question 2
How would you describe your investing knowledge?
Question 3
Are you willing to take on more risk for potentially higher returns?
Question 4
Which best describes your philosophy?
Question 5
Which best describes your current attitude toward investing?
Answer all five to see your result.
Your profile
Sample mix — a starting point, not a recommendation
Curious how your profile translates into a real plan? Let's talk.
This quiz is for general education only and is not investment advice or a recommendation of any specific investment or strategy. The allocations shown are examples and should not be considered a recommendation. Your own mix should be based on your particular goals and situation. There is no assurance that any investment strategy will be successful, and all investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal.
How the Economy Moves Your Portfolio
Markets don't move in a vacuum. The broader economy, whether it's expanding, cooling, or holding steady, shapes how investments behave. You don't need to forecast it. You just need to understand the main forces so you can stay steady when the headlines get loud.
Bull and bear markets. A bull market is a stretch of rising prices and rising confidence. A bear market is the opposite: falling prices and nervous investors. Bear markets are uncomfortable, but they're a normal part of the cycle, and for a long-term investor they can be a chance to buy good companies at lower prices.
Inflation. When prices rise, each dollar buys a little less. A little inflation is a sign of a healthy economy. Too much, and households pull back, company sales soften, and stock prices can follow. Inflation is also the quiet reason cash alone is rarely a plan: money that isn't growing is slowly losing ground.
Interest rates. When the Federal Reserve raises rates, borrowing gets more expensive and stocks often cool. When it cuts rates, the reverse tends to happen. Rates also drive bond prices, which move opposite to yields. None of this is perfectly predictable, which is exactly why a diversified, goal-based plan beats trying to time the next move.
Rebalancing
Left alone, even a well-built portfolio drifts. When one part of the market runs hot, those holdings grow and quietly become a larger share of your portfolio than you intended, which means you're carrying more risk than you signed up for.
Rebalancing brings it back to target. In practice it's a disciplined way to trim what has run up and add to what has lagged, the unglamorous version of buy low and sell high. We monitor your allocation and rebalance on a plan rather than on emotion, and we keep an eye on taxes so the housekeeping doesn't create an unnecessary bill.
Free Investor Resources
Want to go deeper? These guides from LPL Financial are yours to download, no strings attached.
The Basics of Investing
The friendly primer this page is built on. A plain-language walk through the ideas every investor should know.
