After having bought several stocks already, Dr. Stern questions whether he's diversified enough.
His European stock portfolio appears to be quite diversified, with stocks from Switzerland, Germany, France, and the UK, as you can see in the video. He also has several industries in his portfolio. To maintain his diversification, he will avoid the automotive sector since he already owns two automotive stocks.
With the exception of the auto industry, there are no other restrictions when choosing from the Obermatt Top 10 stocks for Germany of May 27. Dr. Stern is staying clear of K+S because they were recently sued. He is also passing on E.ON because of their nuclear exposure and because he already owns RWE from his first investment season.
The next best stock is BASF, which is on the DAX Top 10 List. BASF makes a lot of sense for a long-term European stock portfolio. He didn’t look any further and bought it.
"Diversify by buying different regions and different industries", is our guiding principle here. More on Obermatt.com.
Can diversification be that simple? Yes, it can, especially if you want to buy and hold stocks for the long term. For long-term investors, the mathematical models of the investment bankers are irrelevant because they can never predict the future correlations for a long investment period.
And what about Warren Buffet who buys only a few stocks? Well, Buffet plays in a different league. If you are prepared to spend as much time investing as Buffet, go for a small selection of stocks. If you are like Dr. Stern and don’t want to spend more than an hour or so deciding what stock to buy, then diversify - anything else will prove too risky.