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Course 5 · 10 lessons

Portfolio Construction

A portfolio is a plan wearing positions — here’s how the plan gets built.

Ten lessons on the craft most investors skip: diversification that actually diversifies, position sizing decided before the buy, rebalancing without churn, benchmarks that keep you honest, risk measured per unit of sleep lost, books organized by goal — and the capstone that bolts it all into one machine.

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Unit 1 — The Frame

What a portfolio is for, diversification that works, and the sizing decision that precedes every buy.

01
A Portfolio Is a Plan, Not a Pile

Most people don't have a portfolio — they have a pile: an accumulation of past enthusiasms, each bought for reasons nobody wrote down.

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02
Diversification That Actually Works

Everyone knows the phrase 'don't put all your eggs in one basket.' Almost nobody checks whether their baskets are actually different baskets.

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03
Position Sizing: The Decision Before the Decision

Here's an uncomfortable reordering of importance: how MUCH you buy shapes your outcomes more than most of your picks do.

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Unit 2 — The Upkeep

Rebalancing on schedule, benchmarking without mercy, and reading risk-adjusted results.

04
Rebalancing: Selling High on Schedule

Left alone, every portfolio slowly becomes a different portfolio — winners swell, losers shrink, and one day your careful allocation is a concentrated bet you never chose.

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05
Benchmarks: The Honest Mirror

Here's the question that separates investors from collectors: compared to WHAT?

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06
Risk-Adjusted Returns

Two portfolios both returned 30%.

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Unit 3 — The Architecture

Books by goal, the truth about concentration, the role of cash — and the fully assembled machine.

07
Books by Goal

The tidy fiction is that you have 'a portfolio.' The useful truth is that you have several jobs for money — different deadlines, different stakes — and they deserve different machines.

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08
Concentration: The Double-Edged Sword

Now the heresy lesson.

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09
Cash: Position or Cowardice?

No holding gets more moralizing than cash.

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10
Assembling the Machine

Capstone.

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Not financial advice · Educational only