Key insights
- An individual investor shares their experience transitioning from ETFs to stock picking, highlighting a portfolio construction focused on high-growth sectors like AI, energy, and defense. Despite outperforming a Nasdaq ETF in 2023, the portfolio exhibits amplified volatility, mirroring a leveraged ETF. The investor questions the effectiveness of their stock-picking strategy given the increased risk exposure for marginal gains.
Hi everyone,
I began stock picking 16 months ago. To be honest, I was an ETF investor. I made my DCA every month and I was kind of happy. Finally, I learnt more and more about stock market. And the idea of ETF was less and less convincing for me :
- Why buying a bag of companies you don't know anything about them ?
- Some companies are very promising and you can beat the index's annual performance in some weeks/months.
So I begin and I did what professional advise : diversification.
I bet on several sectors :
- IA (semi conductor, network, services)
- Energy (utilities and cooling)
- gold/silver (i bought more to avoid the risk of fail, so some producter and explorater)
- Defense (military and rare earth)
I bought maybe 2 stocks per sub sector. And finally, I got around 20 stocks.
And my performance ? better than index, but not so better ... In 2025, my nasdaq etf in euro got 4%, and my PF was 20% after change into euro.
I notice something :
- When nasdaq gets 1%, my portfolio got 3-4%
- When nasdaq falls 1%, my porfolio falls 3-4%
Today, I've just the feeling to get a Nasdaq etf with X4 leverage.
what do you think ?
thank you.