Building a Diversified Investment Portfolio: Balancing Risk and Reward

Investing can be complex, but one principle that stands the test of time is diversification. Diversification involves spreading your investments across various types of assets in different classes, industries, and geographies. It is so important that Nobel Prize laureate Harry Markowitz, who is the founder of the Modern Portfolio Theory published in 1952, once said, “Diversification is the only free lunch” in investing.

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Chart of the Day: Imbalance of Rent vs. Buy

Today’s Chart is from Zillow showing that typically the share of income spent on housing costs for homeowners, such as mortgage, taxes, and insurance, has been lower than what renters pay for rental units.

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Chart of the Day: July Record Heat

As we all walk outside this month and think, “It is hot!", remember today’s Chart of the Day from the Statewide High Temperature Records set during the month of July. The mid- to early- 1930’s, which is noted in dark red and coincides with the Dust Bowl, was a particularly bad time for most states.

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Chart of the Day: Brand Wheel

Today’s Chart of the Day is from Jon Erlichman and shows what I like to call the “Brand Wheel".

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Chart of the Day: Winners Don't Win Forever

Today’s Chart of the Day is from Counterpoint Global with data from FactSet. It shows the top three largest US companies from 1950 to 2023. AT&T dominates the list until the early 1980’s but is now 45th. Exxon dominated from 1974 to 2014, but still holds on today at 11th. Microsoft began its run in 1997 and Apple in 2010. This highlights that “winners” don’t hold on forever, and the prudence to trim oversized positions to keep a portfolio balanced.

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Chart of the Day: US Work Ethic

Today’s Chart of the Day is from the Financial Times and shows the number of annual hours worked, per worker, for select economies since 1974.

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Chart of the Day: State Taxes

Today’s Chart of the Day is from Visualcapitalist.com and shows the percentage of personal income paid toward state and local taxes by state in 2024.

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Chart of the Day: Short 1.5 Million Housing Units

Today’s Chart of the Day from ResiClub shows that the US housing market is short 1.5 million housing units. As with all things, the causes, fixes, and effect on our economy are part of a long equation, much too long for this post.

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Chart of the Day: Recovering from Losses is Hard

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Chart of the Day: Florida's 6%

Today’s Chart of the Day with data from the US Census Bureau compiled by Michael Arouet shows that 52% of the US population lives in seven “Mega Regions” which are made up of only 15% of the total land in the US.

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Chart of the Day: Half of World GDP

Today’s Chart of the Day from Epic Maps, @Locati0ns on X, shows that 50% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product (aka GDP, which is a measure of all the things produced) comes from these green areas, which in turn makes up only 3.6% of the total land mass of the world. Yes, it includes Florida.  

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Chart of the Day: Odds to Live at Age 65

Today’s Chart of the Day from JP Morgan shows the probability of how long you'll live if you reach age 65.

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Chart of the Day: 20% Less Than 5 Hours

Today’s Chart of the Day is from Bloomberg and shows the amount of sleep Americans are getting is less and less.

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Chart of the Day: The Dow's Double Double

Today’s Chart of the Day is from the S&P Dow Jones Indices showing the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average index. It started in 1896 at 40 and recently reached 40,000.

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If America Was a Household

Today’s Chart of the Day is from @hedgeye on X, formerly known as Twitter, and shows what a typical family income would look like if the US was a typical household.

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