Portfolio Construction and Investment Choices

This unit teaches students how to assemble, evaluate, and manage diversified investment portfolios across stocks, bonds, funds, real estate, businesses, cash equivalents, and alternative assets while accounting for taxes, costs, liquidity, and risk. It builds on foundational investing concepts and prepares learners to perform transactional due diligence and advanced portfolio adjustments in the final unit.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze and construct diversified asset allocations by creating tailored portfolio recommendations (percent allocations) for at least three investor profiles using stocks, bonds, funds, real estate, cash equivalents, and alternatives.
• Evaluate tax consequences, fees, liquidity, and after-tax returns of investment choices in retirement and non-retirement accounts and calculate the tax impact for given investment scenarios.
• Apply buy/sell decision frameworks and risk-management techniques to identify problem holdings, determine appropriate times to buy or sell, and select suitable investment vehicles (individual securities, funds, bonds, real estate, or business interests).
• Demonstrate transactional readiness by completing due-diligence checklists and simulated transactions for stock purchases, bond acquisitions, property evaluations, and business/franchise assessments while identifying and avoiding problematic practices.