The 20-fund "collection"
- 20 overlapping active/thematic funds
- Blended fee ≈ 0.85%/yr + platform costs
- Hours spent choosing: ~4 upfront, ongoing tinkering
- Behavioural risk: 20 things to panic about
≈ £510,000
The Overlap Simulator
Each bubble is a fund; the glowing cores are the same mega-cap stocks appearing inside every fund. Add funds and watch the shared core grow — you keep buying the same companies through different wrappers.
Drag to rotate · wheel/pinch to zoom
~74%Est. holdings overlap
£25Per fund / month
£58k30-yr fee drag
~6 hrsAdmin / year
…
Two portfolios, 30 years, £500/month
Assume both earn the same 7% market return before fees (they will, if the 20-fund pile is really a closet index). Only fees differ.
The 2–3 fund core
- Global equity tracker + bond fund (+ optional small tilt)
- Blended fee ≈ 0.15%/yr
- Hours spent: 1, once
- Already spread across thousands of companies
≈ £568,000
The fee gap alone compounds into a difference of roughly £58,000 — without taking a penny more risk.
What diversification actually means
Across companies: one global tracker already holds 1,500–8,000 stocks. Fund #2 through #20 mostly re-buys the same Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia at higher cost.
Across asset classes: real diversification adds things that behave differently — bonds, cash, perhaps property. A second tech fund is correlation, not diversification.
Across time: monthly contributions (pound-cost averaging) diversify your entry price. This one is free.
The test: if two funds' top-10 holdings share 6+ names, owning both adds fees, not safety. Most "diversified" 20-fund portfolios fail this test badly.