Balanced Portfolio

Balanced Portfolio is a simple app to help monitor how close a position is from the ideal percentage of a portfolio. If you want to outperform the market, you need to trade around your positions. One great way to do that is with a diversified, balanced portfolio, where you rebalance based on position sizes, not time. That means as the positions in the portfolio grow too large or too small you must add to or remove from your position to bring it back into balance with your portfolio.

To use Balanced Portfolio you create a portfolio, enter the stock and cash holdings, then enter the amount of each position in the portfolio. Balanced Portfolio will then show you how far that position is from an ideal balanced allocation. You can also enter the cash equivalent holding in the portfolio. By default the ideal cash percentage is 20%, but that value can be changed in the options screen.

As always, do homework to make sure a position is still worth holding before bothering to balancing it. If a position is looking like a bad long term investment, it's time to start scaling out of it, sell those rallies.

This balanced portfolio strategy works really well with dividend stocks. It is easier to have confidence to add to position on the way down if there is a decent dividend to put a floor under the stock. Be sure to watch out for dividend cuts. Feel free to email me if you want to chat more about it!