last step to build a profitable profit

Step 4: Rebalancing Strategically 
Once you have determined which securities you need to reduce and by how much, decide which underweighted securities you will buy with the proceeds from selling the overweighted securities. To choose your securities, use the approaches discussed in Step 2. 

When selling assets to rebalance your portfolio, take a moment to consider the tax implications of readjusting your portfolio. Perhaps your investment in growth stocks has appreciated strongly over the past year, but if you were to sell all of your equity positions to rebalance your portfolio, you may incur significant capital gains taxes. In this case, it might be more beneficial to simply not contribute any new funds to that asset class in the future while continuing to contribute to other asset classes. This will reduce your growth stocks' weighting in your portfolio over time without incurring capital gains taxes. 

At the same time, always consider the outlook of your securities. If you suspect that those same overweighted growth stocks are ominously ready to fall, you may want to sell in spite of the tax implications. Analyst opinions and research reports can be useful tools to help gauge the outlook for your holdings. And tax-loss selling is a strategy you can apply to reduce tax implications. 

Step 3: Reassessing Portfolio Weightings 
Once you have an established portfolio, you need to analyze and rebalance it periodically because market movements may cause your initial weightings to change. To assess your portfolio's actual asset allocation, quantitatively categorize the investments and determine their values' proportion to the whole. 

The other factors that are likely to change over time are your current financial situation, future needs and risk tolerance. If these things change, you may need to adjust your portfolio accordingly. If your risk tolerance has dropped, you may need to reduce the amount of equities held. Or perhaps you're now ready to take on greater risk and your asset allocation requires that a small proportion of your assets be held in riskier small-cap stocks. 

Essentially, to rebalance, you need to determine which of your positions are overweighted and underweighted. For example, say you are holding 30% of your current assets in small-cap equities, while your asset allocation suggests you should only have 15% of your assets in that class. Rebalancing involves determining how much of this position you need to reduce and allocate to other classes. 

2nd step to build a profitable portfolio

Step 2: Achieving the Portfolio Designed in Step 1 
Once you've determined the right asset allocation, you simply need to divide your capital between the appropriate asset classes. On a basic level, this is not difficult: equities are equities, and bonds are bonds. 

But you can further break down the different asset classes into subclasses, which also have different risks and potential returns. For example, an investor might divide the equity portion between different sectors and market caps, and between domestic and foreign stock. The bond portion might be allocated between those that are short term and long term, government versus corporate debt and so forth. 

first step to build a profitable portfolio

Step 1: Determining the Appropriate Asset Allocation for You 

Ascertaining your individual financial situation and investment goals is the first task in constructing a portfolio. Important items to consider are age, how much time you have to grow your investments, as well as amount of capital to invest and future capital needs. A single college graduate just beginning his or her career and a 55-year-old married person expecting to help pay for a child's college education and plans to retire soon will have very different investment strategies. 

A second factor to take into account is your personality and risk tolerance. Are you the kind of person who is willing to risk some money for the possibility of greater returns? Everyone would like to reap high returns year after year, but if you are unable to sleep at night when your investments take a short-term drop, chances are the high returns from those kinds of assets are not worth the stress.

As you can see, clarifying your current situation and your future needs for capital, as well as your risk tolerance, will determine how your investments should be allocated among different asset classes. The possibility of greater returns comes at the expense of greater risk of losses (a principle known as the risk/return tradeoff) - you don't want to eliminate risk so much as optimize it for your unique condition and style. For example, the young person who won't have to depend on his or her investments for income can afford to take greater risks in the quest for high returns. On the other hand, the person nearing retirement needs to focus on protecting his or her assets and drawing income from these assets in a tax-efficient manner.