Why Does Your Portfolio Become Chaotic When You Start Investing? — What I Have Left After 8 Years
Hello, I’m Ko.
How are you all spending your Sunday morning before the long weekend?
I’m writing this article while watching the steady rain and enjoying the sound of it.
☕️
When you first start investing, don’t you find it strange how the number of things you ‘want’ increases?
At first, it was supposed to be just ‘let’s try buying an investment trust,’ but after a little research, you think, ‘the S&P 500 seems good.’
Then, after researching further, you start thinking, ‘No, if I want to diversify globally, maybe All Country is better.’
If you watch YouTube, you get curious about the NASDAQ 100, and if you open social media, reports on dividends from high-dividend stocks start flowing in.
Individual stocks also look interesting, and maybe I should hold some gold too. Even a little bit of crypto…
And then, looking at the cluttered list of product names in your brokerage account, you suddenly wonder.
What exactly did I want to invest in?
If there is anyone in that state right now, at least I have been on that side for a very long time, and even at this moment, I am still there.
In fact, looking back now, it might be natural in a sense that the portfolio of someone who has just started investing becomes chaotic.
The first step in investment trusts was 2,000 points
I started investing in 2018.
However, the first purchase of an investment trust in my records was in April 2019.
I bought 2,000 yen worth of Rakuten VT. Moreover, I bought it all with Rakuten points.
The reason was very simple: I wanted to turn my Rakuten points into assets by investing them rather than using them for shopping.
Since I was using Rakuten Securities, it was a natural flow.
I don’t remember having a grand determination to ‘change my life through investment’ when I made that purchase.
Although I now invest a substantial amount every month, that first step was truly small.
However, once I started researching investment from there, the world expanded all at once.
Investment trusts, Japanese stocks, US ETFs, high-dividend stocks.
NASDAQ 100, FANG+, gold, robo-advisors, crowdfunding, crypto assets. And, short-term trading.
Looking at them lined up like this, one might say, ‘In the end, aren’t you doing everything?’
And, in fact, I think that was the case (laughs).
Because you try to know, it increases
When I first started investing, I was looking for ‘something next’ much more than I am now.
Is there a more efficient investment destination? Is there a product that will grow more? Is what I currently hold really okay? —
I read books, watch YouTube, and browse social media. Every time I do, I learn about new products. And once I learn about them, each one really does have its own appeal.
Both the S&P 500 and All Country have their own merits.
High-dividend stocks offer the joy of receiving dividends. NASDAQ 100 and FANG+ offer expectations for growth companies. That is why I think, ‘This looks good too’.
The reason why an investment beginner’s portfolio becomes chaotic is
perhaps not because they are not thinking about anything, but rather because they are thinking about it very hard.
I was the same way myself.
I thought I was diversifying
Even when I was setting up my automatic investments, I was thinking about it properly in my own way.
I think my feeling was that holding multiple products meant diversification.
In fact, until the end of 2024, there were four investment trusts lined up in my NISA automatic investment plan.
All Country, eMAXIS Slim S&P 500, NISSAY Foreign Equity, and SBI-V-S&P 500.
The breakdown was mostly All Country, with small amounts in the other three.
At the time, I intended to be ‘diversifying in my own way’.
But as I researched investing, I realized something.
‘Wait, these overlap quite a bit.’
They look like different products if the names are different, but if you look at the contents, they contain a lot of the same US stocks.
Furthermore, when considering the premise of long-term accumulation, I started to wonder, ‘Is this a product I want to keep holding forever?’
This was something I only started to see little by little after actually buying, researching, and comparing them.
That is why I reviewed my new NISA automatic investment and reorganized it in January 2025.
50,000 yen in All Country, 50,000 yen in S&P 500.
The fact that it is skewed toward the US has not changed, but I am putting 100,000 yen into these two every month.
I have not sold the products I was accumulating until then. I just stopped the automatic investment and changed the destination for the new money coming in.
In the past, I often thought about ‘what to add.’
Now, I think more about ‘is there any point in adding this?’
However, there is one thing I do not want you to misunderstand here.
I do not think that I should have just bought only All Country from the beginning.
When I bought FANG+, I was genuinely excited.
I was quite excited when I invested in FANG+.
AI, giant IT companies. I had expectations that they would continue to grow even further.
It was a slightly different feeling from steadily accumulating an all-country index fund. I think it was a feeling of, ‘I want to ride the future of these companies.’
By holding FANG+, I started looking at the financial results of mega-tech companies. In addition to whether sales increased, I became curious about where they were growing, how much they were investing in AI, and whether their massive capital expenditures were leading to profits. I’ve recently started using that perspective for the financial results of Japanese companies as well.
If I had started by just ‘accumulating only an all-country index fund and not looking at it,’ I might not have researched companies to this extent.
If you look only at the efficiency of asset formation, it might have been a detour. Even so, my perspective on looking at investments has certainly broadened.
I learned something more important than ‘making money’ in short-term trading
On the other hand, there are painful detours. Short-term trading.
For about two years from around 2019 to 2021, I was quite obsessed with automated trading (although I don’t actually remember the exact period).
If you trade at your own discretion, you are swayed by emotions. So, you should automate it—the fact that I have an engineer’s temperament that likes systematization probably also has something to do with it.
I tried programs published for free and looked at other people’s trading results in Discord communities. Even if I suffered a loss, I would start again, thinking, ‘Maybe the market just didn’t match this time’ or ‘Maybe it will work with something else.’
I opened charts on my smartphone many times in the middle of the night. I even looked at the trading screen because I was worried about it, even while on a family trip.
Profits would turn into losses of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of yen in a short time, and if the losses grew, I would add more money. Looking back now, I think, ‘What was I chasing by going that far?’ Later, I also thought that this wasn’t normal.
In the end, I felt that ‘it doesn’t suit me’ and ‘I don’t want to keep chasing price movements anymore,’ so I started to distance myself. To sum up what I learned from short-term trading in one sentence, it is this.
No matter how much potential there is to make money, an investment that doesn’t suit your lifestyle won’t last.
How much time do you spend? How much of your emotions are taken away? Do you worry about the market even when you are spending time with your family?
I don’t think I could have easily understood this just by reading books.
You won’t know yourself until you actually hold it
When you read investment books, it is often written, ‘Let’s consider your risk tolerance.’ Of course, that is important. But as a beginner, honestly, it didn’t really resonate with me.
Even if asked, ‘Can you endure a 20% drop?’, you won’t know if you haven’t actually experienced a 20% drop. I can understand the story of 1 million yen becoming 800,000 yen in my head. But you won’t know how you will feel when you see the screen where your own 1 million yen has actually become 800,000 yen until you see it.
Even if you think, “I’m a long-term investor, so I won’t worry about it,” you might find yourself checking the prices every day. Conversely, there are times when you think, “Actually, this is fine.”
Only after holding high-dividend stocks did I realize that receiving dividends feels more gratifying than I had imagined, or after holding assets with high volatility, I felt they were too much for me to handle.
Having experienced various types of investments, perhaps what I ended up knowing best was myself.
Just because you’ve tried it doesn’t mean you have to keep everything
I believe this point is very important. Just because you have experienced various investments, it doesn’t mean you have to keep everything you bought. I myself had a period where I increased my investment targets.
But now, eight years later, I find myself thinking “Is this still necessary?” more often than adding new products. I liquidated my SBI Wrap. I also sold my gold. I reviewed where my assets are held using NISA.
Now, when I become interested in a new investment, I have started to consider whether there is a seat for it in my portfolio.
Does it overlap with existing assets? What role does it play? How much does it cost? Should I hold it in a NISA account or a taxable account? Should I buy it at the current price? What about the tax implications? I look at these things one by one.
These checklist items have increased little by little through the cycle of buying, hesitating, failing, and reorganizing. That is why I now think, “It’s okay to try various things. But you don’t have to keep everything.”
Even so, my portfolio is not simple
Reading this far, you might think, “So now you only hold All Country and S&P 500, right?” However, that is not the case.
I still hold individual Japanese stocks. I also have alternative investments like ALTERNA. I have kept some crypto assets as well. In a textbook sense, my portfolio is by no means simple even now.
But unlike in the past, I can now explain in my own way why I am keeping them.
Japanese stocks connect my life to my investments
There are reasons other than returns for why I continue to hold individual Japanese stocks.
I remember that the reasons I bought them were mainly dividend yield, expectations for dividend growth, and the sense that the stock price was undervalued. But after holding them, other reasons began to accumulate.
Services I use daily, companies I see in town, businesses whose names I see in the news. When you become a shareholder of such familiar companies, the economy feels a little closer. Even when looking at financial results, for example, beyond the numbers like “sales increased,” I can see my daily life, thinking, “Maybe that service is having an effect.”
And then, the dividends come in.
I am happy about the amount, but more than that, I feel it is a moment where I can truly realize that I own a part of the company.
Of course, if I were to choose how to use the growth investment quota of NISA now, I might make slightly different choices. Even so, I have no intention of letting go of the stocks I currently hold.
If you only think about asset formation, there is a school of thought that says index funds are enough.
However, by holding Japanese stocks, the distance between investing and my daily life shrinks a little. For me, this is the joy of investing that I want to keep.
ALTERNA satisfies the desire to ‘try owning real estate’ a little bit
Another thing I want to keep is ALTERNA. I have been using it for about three years now.
I have always had a slight interest in real estate investment.
But when it comes to actually buying a property, the hurdles of loans, vacancies, repairs, and management make it difficult to just ‘give it a try’.
With a system like ALTERNA, you can get involved in real estate assets with much smaller amounts than buying physical property.
Of course, there are many differences from physical property, and after three years, I have also learned the difficulties unique to this system. I have written about that in this article.
Even so, for me, it is something that satisfies my small longing to ‘try real estate investment’ within a reasonable range.
Reasons like this might not appear much in investment textbooks. But I am fine with that.
Crypto assets are the ‘unknown’ I keep within me
And then there are crypto assets. These are also interesting to me.
Currently, I basically value steadily accumulating assets. Investing via NISA. Holding for the long term. Not disrupting my household budget. Not taking on too much risk. It is quite plain (laughs).
In my portfolio, only crypto assets are a bit unusual.
Will they really become part of the world’s financial infrastructure in the future? Will they look completely different from how they do now? Or will they not spread as much as expected? Honestly, I don’t know.
But that uncertainty of ‘what will happen next’ still tickles my investment mindset a little.
I don’t want to bet my entire assets on it.
I have summarized the rules I decided on to ensure my ‘play money’ doesn’t become the main part of my portfolio here.
But making everything predictable is also a bit unsatisfying for me.
That is why crypto assets might be the small ‘unknown’ that I have left in my portfolio.
What I kept after 8 years was not the ‘correct product’
Looking back like this, what remained in my hands over these eight years was a certain habit.
The habit of asking myself once, ‘Why am I holding this?’
In the past, I feel like my products increased for reasons like ‘it looks good,’ ‘it seems like it will grow,’ or ‘everyone else is buying it.’
In other words, I had many things I was holding just because ‘they looked good.’
Now, I have gradually changed to holding things because ‘they have this role,’ after thinking about whether they overlap with what I already have, what role they play, and what I want to gain by holding them.
What I want to gain might be returns, or it might be dividends. It could be learning or the joy of investing. I am fine with that.
The important thing is to be able to explain the reason yourself.
If you compare the past and the present just by the number of products, it might not have decreased that dramatically. However, even if it still looks complex, it is much more organized than it used to be.
If your portfolio is chaotic right now
Six months after starting to invest.
I bought an all-country fund. But I also bought an S&P 500 fund. I was curious about the NASDAQ 100, so I bought a little of that too. High-dividend stocks looked interesting, so I started those as well. Recently, I’ve even become interested in gold and crypto assets.
—Every time you look at your brokerage account, you might be thinking, “Is it okay to have things so scattered like this?”
To anyone like that, if I were to tell you from the perspective of someone who was in the same place when they started investing, I don’t think you need to blame yourself too much.
Getting interested, researching, buying a little, realizing it wasn’t what you thought, and thinking about it again. That is also a valuable investment experience.
I don’t think many people can create the perfect portfolio for themselves from the very beginning.
Of course, there is no need to make increasing the number of products your goal. You can achieve sufficient diversification with just one broadly diversified index fund.
Therefore, “having a lot” doesn’t mean you are an advanced investor.
But conversely, there is no need to think, “I’m not cut out for investing because I couldn’t build a perfect portfolio from the start.”
I think the important thing is to keep thinking even after you have bought something. And to ask yourself from time to time.
“Why do I hold this?”
It is okay if you cannot answer.
Because the time spent searching for that answer is the very process of finding the investment that suits you.
What I learned because I took the long way around
I have taken quite a long way around over the past eight years.
There have been successful investments, and there have been painful failures. There are things I have sold, and things I still hold today.
If you only view asset formation as a competition, you might see it as “I should have done it faster and more simply.” But for me, investing is about how I will deal with my own and my family’s money for the decades to come.
That is why the eight years I spent learning “this suits me,” “this didn’t suit me,” “I want to hold a little of this,” and “this is the level of risk I can take” were a necessary detour for me.
I don’t think my portfolio has become perfect compared to eight years ago.
It will probably change again from here on out. Some things will increase, and some will decrease.
But there is one thing I can do better than before.
I have become able to explain the reason for keeping something in my own words.
If your portfolio is a little chaotic right now, you don’t need to rush to tidy everything up.
First, just try thinking about one thing: “Why do I hold this?” I think that is enough to start with.
By the way, for my “I hold it because…”, the blank is filled with
For Japanese stocks, it’s because they connect to my daily life, for ALTERNA, it’s
because it reasonably satisfies my longing for real estate, and for crypto assets, it’s
because I want to keep a little bit of uncertainty.
This is just my answer, and it should be completely different for everyone else.
What would you fill in the blank for “I hold this because ___” in your own portfolio?
I think this answer varies from person to person, so I would love to hear about your various perspectives.
I have realized now that, in addition to increasing my assets, I wanted to find my own way of relating to money.
So, “What on earth did I want to invest in?” To this question, I can now answer a little bit. 🌱
The figures in this article are all based on my own accounts and performance (as of September 2026).
🪪 About the author | Kou🌱
I am a company employee who has been investing since the autumn of 2018.
After failing at short-term trading, I now have over 50 million yen in financial assets, focusing on long-term accumulation. I write about asset formation for employees and how to relate to money, including both my successes and my detours. Recently, I have also started exploring side hustles using AI.
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※ This article summarizes my personal experience and thoughts and does not recommend the purchase of any specific financial products. Please make investment decisions at your own responsibility.
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