Portfolio IQ: All-Equity Strategy Leans into Sectors

Noah Damsky was in college during the 2008 financial crisis and he believes living through that experience just prior to entering the professional workforce helped “develop my sea legs for investing.”

“It’s never been worse than that for me,” he added.

Damsky, 36, is a managing partner at Marina Wealth Advisors in Los Angeles and he has agreed to discuss his personal portfolio and investing philosophy with etf.com as part of the Portfolio IQ series.

Damsky has worked in financial services for 15 years, including the last four as an advisory firm owner.

He is part of a double-income household with no kids, and his portfolio is a blend of domestic and international equity ETFs, some private equity fund investments and a few individual stock positions.

All-Equity Portfolio for the Long Term

The absence of any fixed income allocation reflects Damsky’s general outlook toward riding volatility while he is still young enough to recover from major market pullbacks, should they occur.

“I developed my stomach for risk back in 2008 because when I started investing things were plummeting,” he said. “Right now, I see my timeline as being many, many decades out, so I can stomach the risk of an all-equity portfolio.”

Most of Damsky’s portfolio is spread across nine index ETFs, but the overall portfolio is managed around a 25% weighting in three individual stocks that he has held for years and have embedded capital gains.

In building his target allocation of roughly two-thirds U.S. and one-third international equities, Damsky factors in between 8% and 9% weightings in Meta Platforms Inc. (META), Netflix Inc. (NFLX) and Palo Alto Networks Inc. (PANW).

There is also a nearly 7% weighting in two private equity funds.

Damsky’s largest single position is a 15.2% weighting in the Schwab International Equity ETF (SCHF), followed by a 13.4% weighting in the Fidelity MSCI Health Care Index ETF (FHLC).

When it comes to international investments, Damsky wants at least 10% of that slice to be in emerging markets, which is represented by the iShares Core MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (IEMG).

For his domestic equity investments, Damsky avoids broad index exposure and instead leans into sectors and themes.

Including the 13.4% healthcare sector weighting through FHLC, Damsky’s portfolio is allocated to the following sectors from largest to smallest weightings: industrials, financials, consumer discretionary, energy, materials and consumer staples.

Damsky said his personal portfolio reflects the way he invests on behalf of his clients, half of which are a decade or more from retirement.

“Half of my clients are in all equities, and my portfolio lines up with somebody who doesn’t need the money for at least 10 years,” he said. “But if you’re creeping up on traditional retirement age, it might be time to start introducing fixed income into the portfolio.”