Manage your portfolio wisely
Managing your own investment portfolio comes with many challenges. Our ten key questions can help you invest wisely.

1. Is there a shortcut to seeking high returns?
New investors often have unrealistic expectations about returns. Generally speaking, you won't get rich overnight. But you can wait for your investment to take effect and your investment will increase in value over time.

2. Can I time the market?
The key is to develop a clear investment strategy that takes your financial goals into consideration. But most importantly, you must be patient and allow your investments to bear fruit. If you make short-term adjustments too often, you're just guessing at market trends, and the consequences can be disastrous.

3. How much risk can I bear?
It is important to make a clear decision about the risk you are willing to take and then stick to it to ensure your investment is suitable. If you take too much risk, your capital could dwindle quickly; if you take too little risk, it could mean you're not getting enough return on your investment. How much loss can you afford? When markets are declining, it's important to guard against unconscious behavioral biases.

4. How do I seize investment opportunities?
Investors often struggle to extricate themselves when faced with popular market sectors that appear to offer excellent returns. Unfortunately, they may find that they end up losing money by investing too much in volatile speculative assets. This is why there is no substitute for basic research and a truly thorough understanding of any potential investment.

5. How do I monitor my investment portfolio?
Failure to properly monitor your portfolio in response to important market events can result in potential returns being wiped out. While buy and hold is often the preferred investment approach, that doesn't mean leaving it alone. If you make an investment and then neglect it, how can you be sure that the portfolio still meets your needs? Your financial goals are not static, and your portfolio should be able to adapt to your changing requirements.

6. Can I put all my eggs in the same basket?
It feels easier to invest in markets you are familiar with and understand, but don’t forget the golden rule of investing: make sure you stay appropriately diversified across markets, asset classes and industries. Smart investors prepare for different scenarios that can change asset prices, such as rising interest rates. Avoiding local bias and trying to invest across a broad range of asset classes can reduce correlations in times of market stress. When certain markets decline it reduces the likelihood that all of your investments will fall with it.

7. Where can I find good value?
The fees you pay have the potential to eat into your returns, so it’s important to make sure your investment is worth it. This doesn’t necessarily mean finding the cheapest fund, manager or even wealth manager, but rather ensuring that the service and performance they provide clients is value for money.

8. When will you stop?
It can be frustrating when a trade doesn't work out as you expected and you lose money. In fact, behavioral finance experts suggest that the pain we feel when we lose is twice as intense as the thrill of a successful trade. But sometimes it makes more sense to stop things from getting worse as soon as something goes wrong. Think of losses as a valuable lesson learned; keeping underperforming investments could cause more damage to your portfolio.

9. Should I go with the flow?
Going with the crowd rarely works when investing. Successful investors are more likely to be contrarian, acting rationally and buying assets cheaply when they are being ignored by the market. They ignore “market noise” and prefer to objectively assess an asset’s value.

10. Should I go with my feelings?

Some investors believe they have a gift for predicting market movements. They rely on hunches and intuition to invest rather than having a clear plan. While they may experience good luck from time to time, sentimentality is unlikely to provide sustainable returns over the long term.