Breaking Down My Investment Portfolio

Summary

Ben Felix describes a simple but personally tailored balance sheet: most of his liquid, long-term financial assets are invested in one globally diversified equity fund, alongside a concentrated private-company stake, his home, and more cash than he considers strictly necessary. He emphasizes that his choices reflect his own circumstances and that a good financial plan should support a good life—not just maximize portfolio value.

Portfolio and assets

• Public equities — Dimensional Global Equity Portfolio: Holds stocks from around the world, with roughly one-third in Canadian stocks, compared with about 3% of the global market. Felix accepts this home-country overweight.
  • Similar to a broad, low-cost index portfolio, but not technically an index fund.
  • Tilts toward smaller, cheaper, and more profitable companies and excludes some stocks in the small-cap segment.
  • The approach draws on the Fama–French asset-pricing framework, including profitability and investment factors.
• Bonds: Felix holds none. He says bonds are appropriate for many PWL clients but do not suit his own tolerance and ability to withstand volatility. He cautions that an all-stock portfolio can suffer deep drawdowns; flexibility in household spending is part of how his family manages that risk.
• Private equity and company shares: He holds a significant direct stake in PWL, which became associated with OneDigital after PWL’s acquisition in 2025. He received stock options, later bought additional shares, and transferred a significant portion of his PWL stake into OneDigital Capital. He says the transfer partly deferred taxes. He views the investment’s success as substantially influenced by luck and distinguishes it from investing through a private-equity fund: it was a direct stake in a company he knew and helped build.
• Home: Felix bought a home in late 2020, after a lifetime of renting. He says homeownership has been his worst investment financially, citing upkeep, renovations, and foregone investment returns, but the home suits his family’s long-term needs. He frames owning a home as a hedge against rising housing costs for people who plan to stay put. Renting avoids exposure to falling home prices but leaves renters exposed to rising rents.
• Cash: He keeps cash in a high-interest savings account. The balance is higher than he thinks necessary, partly because of unexpected renovation costs. He says it is neither a tactical market-timing allocation nor a planned strategic allocation. The cash offers psychological comfort and could eventually go toward investing, home projects, or family experiences.

Investing framework and reasoning

• Favor a simple, low-cost, broadly diversified public-equity portfolio rather than relying on active manager selection.
• Accept factor tilts toward smaller, cheaper, and more profitable companies, based on the Fama–French research framework.
• Match asset allocation to personal risk tolerance and capacity for volatility. Felix presents his all-equity position as a personal choice, not a general prescription.
• Consider spending flexibility and a household’s ability to tolerate downturns when assessing risk.
• Evaluate housing as both a financial decision and a source of stability and services. The best choice depends on location, expected time in the home, family needs, and housing-cost risks.
• Keep a cash reserve for liquidity and peace of mind if useful, while recognizing its opportunity cost.
• Treat private-company exposure cautiously. Felix acknowledges the concentration risk of investing in a company that also paid his salary and explicitly says others should not take his situation as a recommendation.

Key figures and evidence cited

• Active funds: A 2023 analysis of nearly 8,000 U.S. mutual funds from 1991 to 2020 found that 69.7% underperformed a simple S&P 500 index ETF. After adjusting for market risk, most also had negative returns relative to the index.
• Manager skill: Felix cites research dating to Jensen’s 1968 work, which found that active funds, on average, failed to beat a buy-and-hold market portfolio after expenses. A 2010 study found that most funds performed worse than expected from luck after fees, with few managers showing enough skill to cover costs.
• Private equity: Research by Ludovic Fallopo is cited as finding that, since at least 2006, private-equity funds’ after-fee returns have been on par with public equities.
• All-equity allocation: A 2025 article is described as supporting a diversified, all-stock portfolio—roughly one-third domestic and two-thirds international—as optimal over the life cycle for most people. Felix stresses that this does not make stocks safe.
• Wealth and well-being: Felix says research finds only a weak relationship between income and happiness. He cites a 0.09 correlation and an average happiness gap of about 5 points on a 100-point scale between households earning $15,000 and $250,000. The video also reviews differing research on whether happiness levels off at higher incomes.

Disclosures and cautions

• Felix says he has no financial interest in Brian Portnoy’s book.
• He acknowledges that his private-company investment is concentrated and that its success involved luck; he does not recommend that others replicate it.
• He presents his portfolio as personal rather than prescriptive. No explicit “not financial advice” disclaimer is stated in the subtitles.
• Felix identifies himself as Chief Investment Officer of PWL Capital, which manages approximately $8 billion for Canadian families, businesses, and institutions. He notes that PWL uses the Dimensional fund for some clients, but not all clients have all-equity portfolios.

Presenter and sources

Presenter: Ben Felix.

Sources and research mentioned: Brian Portnoy’s How I Invest My Money, Volume 2; Michael Jensen’s mutual-fund research (1968); Fama and French’s three-factor and later five-factor work; studies from 2005, 2010, 2018, 2021, and 2023 on wealth, happiness, and fund performance; Ludovic Fallopo’s private-equity research; a 2025 article on all-equity portfolios; and a 2013 Globe and Mail interview.