I was putting some money aside in a savings account to buy the kids their first car when they come of driving age in the next 2 or 3 years. They don't know it exists, I'm telling them they have to get a job and save on their own for one.
On a whim, I moved it from a regular savings account to it's own little brokerage account with Ameritrade back in August (no fee trades). It's something to play with and see if I could grow it a little rather than have it sit in a boring savings account letting the bank make money off of it.
So far it's up about 35%. It's mostly all tech stock stuff. Not individual companies but ETFs, no bonds. It's completely unbalanced and lots of overlap between the ETFs. It would give a real financial advisor heartburn. Maybe someday I'll spend some time to streamline it.
Approx breakdown of the portfolio's main ETFs:
25% FAANG & NASDAQ-100 index (QQQ, some other FAANG picks)
23% Innovation (ARKK, ARKW, LOUP)
23% Green Energy (TAN, PBW, LIT, QCLN)
13% Heath Care Genom (ARKG)
6% Next Gen NASDAQ (QQQJ)
5% each in Consumer Discretionary (IBUY) and FinTech (ARKF)
If you do a canned x-ray analysis on what's in the bucket of the various ETF's and break it down into the major stock sectors, they fall into a Large Cap, Aggressive Growth benchmark.
Energy: 0.25%
Materials: 3%
Industrials: 10%
Consumer Discretionary: 16%
Consumer Staples: 1%
Health Care: 18%
Financials: 1.5%
Information Technology 37%
Communication Services: 11%
Utilities: 3%
Real Estate: 0.25%
80% US stock
15% Asia stock
5% Europe stock
45% Large Cap
30% Mid Cap
25% Small Cap
Riding the wave after the COVID crash. If and when the market crashes again, I'll bail out before I lose the principle. If that's the case, I'm no worse off than if it was sitting in a generic savings account. If it totally bellies up overnight and my secret kids car fund goes poof then the kids will have to walk in the snow... up hill... both ways like the good old days. Besides, the bus schedules are free and I can dumpster dive for unclaimed lottery tickets to buy them some good walking shoes.
It's not my retirement, just a little something to play with.