Your First Portfolio: What It Is Built From

A first portfolio is built not from a list of good tickers but from asset-class weights matched to a specific date when the money has to come back and a specific willingness to watch a drawdown. The horizon is set first: when the sum will be needed back, and in full. The horizon determines how much goes into fixed income and how much into equity instruments. Only after that are individual securities chosen within each share. The reverse order — buying what was being named in the news feed and wondering why afterwards — is the main reason a first portfolio falls apart on the very first wave of volatility: the position has no role, so it is unclear when to hold it and when to close it.

Horizon and reserve come before the brokerage account

Before an account is opened, you need a cash reserve outside the market — in a bank deposit or a savings account. Its purpose is mechanical: if a loss of income or a sudden expense forces you to sell securities, you will have to sell them at whatever price is in the order book right now, not at the price you were counting on. The reserve breaks this link between personal circumstances and the market price. Until there is a reserve, any portfolio is a portfolio with a forced exit at the worst moment.

The horizon sets the acceptable share of equity instruments. Money needed in a matter of months is not kept in stocks at all: the period is too short for a drawdown to be recovered, and the instrument is not to blame here — the mismatch between the period and the instrument is.

Which asset classes make up the structure

The foundation is usually laid with bonds. Government issues — OFZ — differ from corporate ones in the credit risk of the issuer; corporate bonds pay more precisely for that risk, not for the buyer's cleverness. The key mechanism a beginner overlooks: the price of a fixed-coupon bond moves against interest rates. If rates have risen, the bond's price has fallen, and if you sell before maturity, the difference goes into your result. Hold to maturity and you receive the face value and the coupons under the terms of the issue. A general overview of the debt market is gathered in the bonds section.

The equity part — stocks — is a share in a business, not a bet on a chart. Its return comes from two sources: the change in price and payouts to shareholders. The schedule of upcoming payouts is easiest to check in the dividend calendar; the nearest ones across the market: {{dividend_calendar|limit=5}}.

If there is no time to analyse individual issuers, the same equity part can be assembled through exchange-traded funds: a basket of securities already sits inside, and the management of diversification is taken off your hands — along with a fee for that convenience.

How many securities, and what diversification actually does

Diversification removes the risk of a single issuer: bankruptcy, an accident, sanctions against a particular company. It does not remove market risk — in a broad decline the basket falls too. Hence the practical conclusion: you need to pick securities from different industries, not several tickers from one sector that move together and create an illusion of being spread out. Concentrating the whole sum in a single issuer is not a portfolio but a bet.

A sensible basket size to start with is a few positions that you are able to keep up with: reading the financial statements, remembering why they were bought. A portfolio of dozens of securities that nobody follows is worse, in terms of decision quality, than a short list.

What to look at on the instrument page before buying

An instrument page — for example, {{instrument:SBER}} — shows the current parameters by which a security is compared with its peers. Valuation is read through multiples: 3,71 for one issuer and 42,19 for another are comparable only within the same industry — a bank and an oil company have different earnings structures, and a direct comparison of the numbers means nothing. Next come the financial statements and the corporate events calendar: the record date, the publication of results, the shareholders' meeting. Unfamiliar terms are explained in the glossary.

Account, taxes and regularity

The tax base for transactions is determined by the rule 13%. An IIS adds tax terms to a brokerage account in exchange for a minimum holding period set by law: if the account is closed early, the benefits received have to be returned. So the choice of account type is also a decision about the horizon, not a formality at registration.

From there the portfolio lives by a routine rather than a one-off assembly: contributions on a schedule regardless of the market's mood, and periodic rebalancing — bringing the weights back to their targets when the part that has grown has become too heavy. Rebalancing mechanically forces you to sell what has risen in price and buy more of what has fallen, that is, it does what is psychologically hard to do by hand.

{{callout:warning}}No allocation here is a recommendation: the platform does not know your income, obligations or horizon, and the returns of past periods do not carry over to future ones. The specific weights are determined by your situation and, in complex cases, by a consultation with a specialist.{{/callout}}

Keeping track of what is happening with the issuers on your list is easier through the news feed — but there is no need to respond to every headline with a trade: a portfolio is changed when its purpose changes, not when the mood of the feed changes.