When should I be in the Growth portfolio?

The Wealthsimple Growth portfolio is our high risk portfolio. In other words, we built this portfolio with the goal of maximizing the long-term growth of your account. We expect this portfolio to have the highest returns as markets trend upwards over time (10+ years), but to also suffer the largest short-term losses during a market decline (e.g. a ~40% loss in 2008).

Warning: If you'd like to aim for the highest returns over the long-term, you need to be comfortable knowing that your portfolio can be subject to the largest losses during a market downturn. You should only have this risk profile if you're certain that you wouldn't panic and sell when and if markets drop significantly. Research shows that any investors, especially those new to markets, overestimate their risk tolerance. That's why we typically don't recommend a growth portfolio if you are newer to investing.  

Our Growth portfolio has 80% exposure to equities and 20% exposure to fixed income or bonds. You can read more about which assets are in the non-registered (ie. taxable/personal) or registered (ie. IRA) Growth portfolios here.

The Growth portfolio is ideal for experienced investors with the following situations:

1. If you have a long-term goal (buying a home, retirement, inheritance, etc) that's 10+ years away and are comfortable with seeing very large fluctuations in your account.
2. If you're retired, have a pension or a stable source of income, and are comfortable with large fluctuations in your account. Note: if you're retired and your investments are your primary source of income, a growth portfolio is most likely not your best option.
3. If you're investing a small amount of your total assets with Wealthsimple and a large loss for that amount would not affect your ability to achieve your goals.
4. If you're investing for a medium-term (~5 year) goal, prefer focusing on growing your money aggressively, but are willing to accept that you may have to push back the objective if markets drop significantly. A flexible time horizon can allow you to take more risks.

If you feel like one of your accounts should be in the Growth portfolio but isn't at the moment, you can change your risk profile by navigating to any of your portfolios from the main landing page (using a desktop computer) and choosing an option from the Portfolio Type dropdown menu on the lefthand side of the screen.