Building a first portfolio
For money that has sat in a bank account too long. What to open, what to buy, in what order, and how not to undo it in the first bad month.
Book a 30-minute callWho this is for
- You have savings earning nothing and a growing suspicion that this is itself a decision
- You have opened a broker account and never placed a trade
- You want to start properly rather than start twice
What is included
- 01Cash reserve firstHow much stays in cash and why, settled before anything is invested. Investing money you may need in eight months is the most common avoidable mistake.
- 02Account and platformWhich type of account, on which platform, and the cost differences that actually matter at your size. We take nothing from any platform for saying so.
- 03A starting portfolioA small number of holdings you can explain, sized deliberately. Complexity added later is easy; complexity removed later is expensive.
- 04Entry planAll at once or across a schedule, decided on your temperament as much as the arithmetic, and written down before the first order.
- 05The falling-market ruleWhat you will do when the portfolio is down twenty percent, agreed now, in writing, while nothing is happening. This is the part that decides outcomes.
- 06First-year check-insScheduled contact through the first twelve months, when most people abandon a good plan.
What this looks like in practice
Six figures in a savings account for four years, a broker account opened but never used, and a stated fear of starting right before a crash.
We set the cash reserve, chose the platform on cost, built a four-holding starting portfolio, and wrote the entry schedule and the falling-market rule into the same document.
The account funded and the first orders placed by the client, with a written rule for the bad months agreed before any of them arrived.
What it costs
Dimension10% of the gain
There is no separate charge for this piece of work. Nothing. The share of the gain is the whole of it.
The full scale, the minimum, a worked total including broker or platform costs, and our written policy on retrocessions all sit on one page.
See the fee scaleQuestions
Is there a minimum to work with you?
Stated openly on the fees page. We would rather you knew before a call than during one.
Should I wait for a better entry point?
You will get our reasoning and a written schedule, not a prediction. Nobody can tell you where markets go next, and any adviser implying otherwise has told you something about themselves.
What if I lose money?
You can. Investing puts capital at risk and a portfolio can be worth less than you put in. What we can do is make sure the risk you take is one you chose deliberately and can live with.
Related work
- 01Investment adviceWhat to buy, in what proportion, and when to leave it alone. We research and recommend; you place every trade yourself, from your own account.
- 06Tax-aware investingSwiss investors are taxed on wealth and on income, not usually on capital gains. Build a portfolio that ignores this and you hand over returns you never had to.
- 05Retirement investingPillar 3a (Säule 3a), vested benefits and pension capital, invested rather than left in cash, and the drawdown question that follows.