How to Build a 5-Part ETF Portfolio Starting With $100 | Courtney Hale

The Table with Anthony ONeal

In this episode of 'The Table with Anthony O'Neal,' host Anthony sits down with financial expert Courtney Hale to break down how everyday investors can build a

Key takeaways

• ETFs offer broad market exposure without requiring deep research into individual stocks.
• Overlapping ETF holdings (e.g., S&P 500, NASDAQ, and tech-focused ETFs) can lead to overconcentration rather than true diversification.

Main topics

• Introduction to ETFs and how they differ from index funds
• Building a diversified ETF portfolio with minimal capital

Notable quotes

"Every dollar in your investing portfolio needs to have a job."

Conclusion

Anthony O'Neal emphasizes that building wealth starts with structure, consistency, and strategy—not just picking stocks. By following Courtney

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Let's get to it, man. I want to answer this question up front because people came here for a reason today. What exactly is an ETF and why should we be really dialing into those? Yeah, an ETF is a basket of individual stocks that follow an index or follow a particular industry. Okay, so the value of the ETF is that you don't have to pick individual companies. So many people think that they got to have all of these companies in their portfolio and they need to know what sectors to buy companies and what sectors. But an ETF does that work for you. So it's a mutual fund, but with lower fees because it follows an index. So do you what's the difference between an ETF and index? Yeah. The biggest difference is how they're traded. So an ETF is traded like a stock. Speaker 1 (0:50) You can buy it whenever you want to when the market is open. An index fund, you can typically only close out that position at the end of the trading day. Got you. That's the biggest difference. All right, all right. So what's the very first thing, man? Today we're learning about how do we build an investment portfolio, specifically ETF portfolio that's worthwhile. How do we start, bro? So, so many people... aren't investing because they think they don't have time to do the research and they think you got to sit behind a computer and they think you got to be a finance expert. Like none of that is true. All right. None of that is true. And one way that you can build a portfolio to help you hit your freedom goal, whatever your investment number is, is simply building a portfolio only using ETFs. Speaker 1 (1:43) See, a lot of people have gotten to this point to where they are buying individual stocks and then they're buying some mutual funds as an ETF. And they don't have any real strategy behind how they've selected it. And that creates some problems. Number one, you can have duplicity in fees. But the biggest issue is that you can have over concentration. So if you own VOO. which is the S&P 500. Then if you own NASDAQ, which is the top 100 tech companies, and then maybe you own something like SMH, you really have about four companies that you've bought like three different times. All right. So there's no real diversification there. Oh, that's good. And so with what we're about to talk about today, whether you have a hundred dollars or if you have a million dollars, this is the way that you can build a portfolio, set it and forget it. Okay. Speaker 1 (2:35) All right. The average person in America is making right around 48 household income with two or more right around $70,000. So they don't have a whole lot to invest. How do we start if I have not as much to invest in the ETF world? Yeah. Just be consistent. Automate it. I tell, you know, there are some parallels between budgeting and investing. OK. Right. So every time you get paid, you got to have a budget. You got to know where your money goes. Investing is the same way. Every time you get paid, you need to be investing. Okay. So one of those budget in line items needs to be for investing. Yes. It needs to be automated. Yeah. As well. Yeah. And the same way in your budget, you've given every dollar a job. Yeah. Every dollar in your investing portfolio needs to have a job. I like that budgeting and investing together. I like it. All right. So. Speaker 1 (3:33) Coach me. I have an extra $250 on my line item in my budget to invest every month. I do not have any ETFs. I don't have no investment portfolio. What's the very first thing I do at $250 to go into building an ETF portfolio? All right. So this is what I'm going to do. This is how we're going to do this. Let's do it. I'm going to give you the structure. Okay. And then I'm going to give you my. Speaker 1 (4:01) Hold on, let me write down the structure for me then. And y'all need to be writing down the structure too. I'm writing it down for y'all, right? But I have one just so y'all know that. Okay. It don't have to be exactly mine. Okay. But I want to give you the stocks that are in mind in every category. All right, let's do it. All right. So I've built out the everyday investor portfolio. So my community is very familiar. The purpose of the everyday investor portfolio is that every dollar has a job. So you have your engine. That's the foundation of your portfolio. Okay. Then you have your accelerator, which is the portion of your portfolio that's going to grow. Okay. Then you got your shield. The shield is to give you protection in the event that the market moves in the opposite direction. That's good. Then you have your edge. Your edge. Speaker 1 (4:45) may just be a personal interest industry or stock that you care about and you want it in your portfolio. We're teaching people how to invest, so we're giving them the freedom to make their own selections inside of their portfolio with the edge. And then the last category is power plays. Power plays are industries and companies that are going to benefit from the leadership that we have in the country right now. For the first time ever, the federal government owns publicly traded companies. All right. And if you invest in them companies or if you invest in the companies that our congressmen and women are invested in, you're going to do well. Those are the five categories. Love it. So we got engine, accelerator, shield, edge. Speaker 1 (5:27) Power plays. Those are the five jobs that you got to have in your portfolio. Cool. Great. And then up underneath each one of those, you have different ETFs that you're investing in up underneath them. Correct. Hey, y'all, I'm going to say this right now. We're going to give you as much play as we can on this episode, but it's only like 35, 40 minutes. So I want to say this up front. You're going to get a lot of play in this episode, but to get. Speaker 1 (5:53) The fullness of it, you've got to subscribe to his channel. He's even hosting a webinar this week as well. Go over to his channel. He'll give you the days and the times. As a matter of fact, when are you hosting your next webinar? Thursday, PM Eastern. Thursday, bet. So we're going to give it a play right now. All right, get all this information, write this down, bring it to the webinar, ask them questions on Thursdays. All right? Okay, so we got five. Engine, accelerator, shield, edge, power plays. Speaker 1 (6:22) Now, if I'm being honest, that sounds like a lot, Courtney. It's really not. Let me tell you why it's not. I tell people, keep your portfolio starting out to five to seven investments. Okay. Anthony, let me tell you something. You know, I'm talking to people every week on these webinars. Right. People are asking questions. They're commenting. We're seeing people with 30 different investments in their portfolio. 30 different ones? And this is... Speaker 1 (6:49) It is more of the norm than an exception. Let me tell you what people are doing. And I love this. So people are listening to us and any investment that we mention, they're buying it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so if you look at we've been doing this a little over a year now, we've talked about a lot of different stocks. Yes, sir. And so I love that people are taking action. But see, we got to put strategy behind the portfolio. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. See, we don't want to be. I call it portfolio promiscuous. All right. Every time you see a star, you like it. Yeah. You know, you want to commit to it. You want to spend a little money on it. You want to take it home and put it in your. Yeah. I don't need you to be stock hot. I don't want you to be no stock. I want you to be. Hey, my man says stock. I don't want you to be a stock. OK, I want you to be committed to your five to seven. Speaker 1 (7:44) investments and you focus there. Okay. Stay there. Okay. All right. All right. So this is giving you a way to own five ETFs. I love it. So the reason why I said this sounds like a lot because I'm thinking I'm putting several ETFs up underneath each one. No. So you're saying just one. One. Brilliant. One. Brilliant. All right. Let's go to the top. Engine. What am I doing? So for my engine and mine, I'm going SPMO. SPMO. All right. This is like the filet mignon of the S&P 500. That's where I go. It's the top 100 companies out of the S&P 500 that have the most momentum, and it gets rebalanced every six months. Speaker 1 (8:34) I got that one. I like that one. Now, let me ask you this. The SPMO, I got this one maybe about like six years ago. What would you say the