Is My Portfolio Diversified? Five Checks You Can Do Yourself

Owning five funds doesn't mean you're diversified. If all five track large US companies, you own roughly the same few hundred stocks five times. What counts is how many different risks you carry.

None of these five checks needs special software, though they're quicker with a tracker that shows your breakdown.

1. Single-position concentration

List your biggest individual holdings as a share of your total net worth, including property and cash.

A common rule of thumb is to be careful once any single company goes above 5 to 10% of your investments. Treat it as a rough guide. But if one stock is 30% of everything you own, a single bad earnings report can set you back years.

Watch for hidden concentration too. Big index funds hold the same large companies, so a world ETF plus a US tech ETF plus a few individual tech shares can add up to a large bet on a handful of names.

2. Country exposure

Global index funds aren't as global as their names suggest. In the MSCI World index, US companies made up about 70% of the weight as of August 2026 (Daily Maverick). That may be what you want, but it should be a choice.

The opposite problem is home bias: holding mostly companies from your own country because they feel familiar. When your job, your home and your investments all depend on one economy, a local downturn hits all three at once.

3. Currency exposure

Add up how much of your net worth sits in each currency. Then compare it with the currency you'll spend in. A German saver with 90% of their wealth in US-dollar assets has made a big currency bet, possibly without realising it. Tracking net worth across currencies goes into this in more detail.

4. Asset class mix

Split your total into broad buckets:

• Cash and deposits
• Shares and equity funds
• Bonds
• Property
• Gold and other commodities
• Crypto
• Pension savings (by what they're invested in, if you know)

There's no single correct mix. It depends on your age, goals and how you'd react to a 30% fall. What you're looking for are surprises: maybe your home is 75% of your net worth, or your "small crypto experiment" has grown to a quarter of it.

5. Your employer and your income

People often forget this one. If you work at a company and also hold its shares (through an employee plan or by choice), your salary and your savings depend on the same business. A bad year for the company could cost you both. The same logic applies if you work in a sector and invest heavily in that sector.

What to do with the results

You don't need to fix everything at once. Most of the time, the cheapest way to rebalance is with new money: direct your next savings toward whatever is underweight rather than selling (which can trigger fees or tax). Write down your target mix, check it once or twice a year, and adjust gradually.

This is general information, not advice for your situation. If you're unsure, a fee-only financial adviser can review your mix.

Getting the numbers

The hardest part of these checks is collecting everything in one place. Once your accounts, funds, property, gold and crypto are listed together, the percentages are just arithmetic. NetWorthy's Pro analysis shows concentration, gaps and currency exposure across all your accounts. If you're starting from zero, the net worth calculator gives you the totals by category in a couple of minutes.