1. Diversification is considered to be the only free lunch in investing. In a nutshell, by investing in a range of assets, you reduce the risk of one investment's performance severely hurting the return of your overall investment. You could think of it as financial jargon for "don't put all of your eggs in one basket."

2. In terms of diversification, the greatest amount of difficulty in doing this will come from investments in stocks. This was illustrated in the commissions section of the article, where we discussed how the costs of investing in a large number of stocks could be detrimental to the portfolio. With a $1,000 deposit, it is nearly impossible to have a well-diversified portfolio, so be aware that you may need to invest in one or two companies (at the most) to begin with. This will increase your risk.

3. This is where the major benefit of mutual funds or exchange-traded funds (ETFs) come into focus. Both types of securities tend to have a large number of stocks and other investments within the fund, which makes them more diversified than a single stock.

Written by Dr. Chao Yuang Shiang (趙永祥 博士)

Faculty, Dep. of Finance, Nanhua university