23/02/2021
Equity portfolio diversification: how many stocks are enough? Evidence from India
Rajan Raju and Sobhesh Kumar Agarwalla
Working Papers
How many stocks are required to reduce unsystematic risk significantly is an important question for investors. While there is a large body of research on the subject in the United States, there is little formal work on this question in India. We show that a 15-20 stock portfolio, the traditional market rule-of-thumb for a diversified portfolio, is likely inadequate to minimise unsystematic risk. We show that an investor could target to reduce diversifiable risk by 90% with a 90% confidence with a portfolio of 40-50 stocks. We build a practical framework that serves as a baseline for investors to target a specific reduction in diversifiable unsystematic risk at a chosen confidence level.