When should I be in the Balanced SRI portfolio?

The Wealthsimple Balanced SRI portfolio is our medium risk portfolio with a focus on Socially Responsible Companies. In other words, we built this portfolio with the goal of balancing the growth and the protection of your capital while ensuring we align your investments with your ethics and values. Over the long-term, we don't anticipate this portfolio to have the highest expected returns as markets trend upwards over a long period of time, but it will also provide a fair amount of cushion (or capital protection) during a market decline. That said, this portfolio can still suffer short-term losses during a broad market decline (e.g. a ~20% losses in 2008). 

Our Balanced SRI portfolio has 50% exposure to equities and 50% exposure to fixed income or bonds. You can read more about which assets are in the Balanced SRI portfolio here.

 This portfolio is ideal for the following situations:

1. If you have a goal (buying a home, saving for a vacation, etc) that's about 5-10 years away and are comfortable with some fluctuations in your account.
2. If you're retired and are comfortable with some fluctuations in your account.
3. If you have a longer term goal (10+ years) and are willing to take some risks to ensure your funds grow adequately over time but aren't comfortable with very large fluctuations in your account.
4. If you have a longer term goal (10+ years) and are willing to take some risks to ensure your funds grow adequately over time but haven’t had experience with investing or account fluctuations before. This is ideal for first time investors.

Note: The SRI version of our Balanced portfolio has a fee that is slightly higher than our standard growth portfolio (a weighted average of 0.22% instead of 0.10%). 

If you feel like one of your accounts should be in the Balanced SRI 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.