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of companies, across a wide range of industries and countries, buying stocks that meet our personal criteria. Then we can revisit those choices and keep our portfolio updated to match our changing needs.

Most of us do not want to devote that amount of time, effort and education. Additionally, if you are prepared to do that, you are also probably not reading this article. Fortunately, there are easy ways to get diversified with a lot less work. Mutual Funds.

Mutual funds allow you to get a variety of investments with a single selection by combining money from a lot of investors and knowledge from multiple investment professionals. Those professionals take the combined money and split them among their investment selections that meet the stated goals of the fund.

There are still thousands of mutual funds to choose from. Fortunately, many online brokerages offer mutual fund screeners that you can use to narrow the choices down to meet your needs. You can choose from blue chip funds that only in the Large-cap stocks that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Or you could choose from bond funds, health-care funds, telecommunications funds, utilities funds, transportation funds, foreign funds, and much, much more.

A well diversified stock market portfolio will have a mix of investments that includes large, mid and small-cap stocks, growth stocks, value stocks, bonds and foreign stocks that are spread across a wide range of industries including banking, telecommunications, manufacturing, utilities, health care, pharmaceuticals, technology, transportation and real estate among others.

This mix can easily be measured, again using the tools most brokers provide to their clients. These tools can tell you, based on your portfolio holdings, how diversified you are according to multiple criteria and will provide suggested allocations based on your risk tolerance and time horizon for use of the invested funds. The tools can even suggest changes you can make to reach your diversification goals.

Learn more about this author, Jack Thornton.
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