If I Started Investing In 2027, This Is What I'd Buy

When I first started investing at 19, I was renting a $400 room with no light, no lock on the door, not even a closet. I was working 80 to 90 hours a week and I remember sitting in my car literally crying because I was so exhausted. I knew absolutely nothing about investing but I knew one thing, I couldn't spend the rest of my life trading my time for money. So I started to learn how to make my money work for me instead of me always having to work for it. I taught myself how to invest through YouTube and started with a few hundred dollars at a time. My first ever tiny dividend was 69 cents and it got me hooked. Then I got heavily focused on the S&P 500 and finding the investment that would make me the most money. Almost a decade later my answer is very different. Quick disclaimer before we get into it, I'm not a financial advisor and this video is for educational purposes only, not personal investment advice. Some of the ETFs and stocks I talk about are ones I personally own so just know I'm sharing my own experience and my own biases. Every investment comes with risk and everyone's goals and situations are different so what makes sense for me might not make sense for you. Please do your own research or talk to a professional before you invest. If I had to start again in 2027, I'd build one simple What's called a core and satellite portfolio. And if you've never heard of that term before, it's actually really simple. Picture a planet with a few small moons orbiting around it. The planet is your core. It's the biggest part of your portfolio and its job is to be a little boring on purpose. It's broad, it's diversified, and it's something you can keep buying every single month without overthinking it. Usually that's all-in-one ETFs that own thousands of companies around the world. I'll tell you which one is in my portfolio later. Now the moons are your satellites. These are smaller investments where you get to act on your own convictions. Maybe that's an industry you're really bullish on like technology or something that pays you regular income. So the core does the heavy lifting. The satellites are where you get to have opinions. And the most important part is that the moons stay small. A lot of investors keep something like 80-90% in their core and then only 10-20% in satellites. There's no magic number, but the idea is that if one of your satellite bets doesn't work out, your whole portfolio doesn't go down with it. Honestly, that concept was what I was missing when I first started. I was so focused on chasing dividends that I never had a core at all. For me, 65% would be the part that doesn't depend on me being right. The other 35% would give me room for a technology tilt, a few individual companies, and monthly income. I'm going to give you the exact allocation, the exact tickers I'd use, what I'd avoid, and how I'd keep the plan running even with a small starting amount. But before I buy a single investment, there are three things I need in place before I invest the first dollar. First, I want zero high interest debt. My line is anything 80% or higher. It doesn't make sense to chase an uncertain return in the stock market while expensive debt is charging you a guaranteed one. Second is I'd want an emergency fund. Investing works best when the money can stay invested. If one car repair or unexpected bill forces you to sell during a bad market, the portfolio never gets the time it needs to grow. Third, I want to know what amount I can comfortably invest every single month. I want an amount that I can automate without needing it back for rent, groceries, or next month's credit card bill. Once those things are handled, I would open a TFSA. Why I would start with a TFSA. For this beginner portfolio, I'm keeping the account decision simple. I'd start with a TFSA instead of trying to explain a TFSA RRSP and FHSA all at once. A TFSA can hold investments and the growth and withdrawals are generally Okay, so the TFSA is a container. Now we need to decide what investments go inside it. My exact 65-15-10-10 portfolio. If you gave me $10,000 to start, this is the portfolio I built. 65% or $6,500 would go into ZEQT. 15% or $1,500 would go into QQQM. 10% or $1,000 would be split among a small group of individual stocks. Then the final 10% or again $1,000 would go into HUTL for monthly income. I'd keep those percentages even if I were starting with $500 or $1,000. The dollars would change, but the jobs wouldn't. 65% ZEQT, the part that doesn't depend on me being right. So ZEQT would be my core. It's an all equity ETF. An All Equity ETF is a single fund that invests 100% in stocks, so no bonds or cash, and usually holds thousands of companies from around the world. So one purchase gives me exposure across markets instead of making me decide the perfect way for Canada, the US, international or emerging markets. I used to be much more focused on the S&P 500. I held VFV in my TFSA and VOO in my RRSP and I thought Owning 500 companies meant that I was fully diversified. I still think the S&P 500 can be a great investment. What changed is I stopped wanting my entire financial future to depend on one country and the same giant U.S. companies continuing to lead forever. So instead of putting my new money into VFV every month, I started putting it into ZEQT. I didn't need to sell everything or decide that VFV had suddenly become bad. You don't have to break up. With an ETF, just because your strategy changes, you can just change where the next dollar goes. ZEQT is an all-stock investment, so remember that it can still fall when the stock market falls. It's not going to be stable every single month guaranteed. It's the core because it spreads my equity exposure more broadly and doesn't depend as much on me picking the next winner. 15% QQQM, an intentional technology tilt. The next 15% would go into QQQM, which tracks the NASDAQ 100. It gives me heavier exposure to 100 of the largest non-financial companies listed on the NASDAQ. This is where I let myself be more aggressive. I'm 28, I have a long time horizon, and I believe heavily in technology and innovation. But QQQM isn't making this portfolio more diversified. Many of its largest companies already are sitting inside ZEQT. I would buy it if I intentionally want more exposure to them. That's a technology tilt, not diversification. For my Canadians, QQQM is listed in the US, so I would need US dollars to buy it. In a TFSA, there's a 15% withholding tax on the dividends, but QQQM's dividend is small, so that cost is also small. But if you rather stay in Canadian dollars, QQQC tracks the same index. 10% individual stocks, opinions, but with a limit. The next 10% would be individual stocks. For me, that could include companies like Google, Meta, TD, TSMC, and ASML. I genuinely enjoy making small, educated bets in individual companies, and I still want a place in my portfolio where I can act on those convictions. But I wouldn't let this 10% become the foundation. At 19, I felt like investing meant proving I could pick the next winner. Now I care more about what happens if my strongest conviction is wrong. 10% gives me room to have opinions without requiring every opinion to work. And yes, Google, Meta, and ASML are already inside QQQM, and ZQT holds them as well, but owning them directly is a deliberate bet on companies I have high conviction on, and the 10% cap keeps that bet from taking over. If one stock grows enough to push that slice past 15% of the portfolio, I trim it and move the extra into ZQT. 10% HUTL. Income with a specific job. The final 10% would go into HUTL, the Harvest Utilities Leaders Income ETF. HUTL holds a portfolio of global utilities companies and uses a covered call strategy to support monthly cash distributions. That gives this part of my portfolio a very different job from ZQT or QQQM. There is a psychology to getting paid that always keeps me invested. The first dividend I ever received was 69 cents from Fortis and seeing cash appear in in my account changed the way I understood and Now, I wouldn't pick an investment just because the yield looks high, and I wouldn't make an income ETF the whole portfolio. A distribution, or dividend, is only one part of the return. I still want to know what the fund owns, how it generates a distribution, and what the fees are, and what I'm giving up for that income. For HUTL, those trade-offs are specific. It holds about 30 companies across utilities, telecoms. Oil and gas storage and transportation, so it isn't only traditional utilities. Its fees are much higher than ZQT's at roughly 0.9% a year. It's a higher management fee because it sells covered calls and requires active management. Keep in mind that it could give up some of the upside when those stocks rally. All that being said, I'm okay with that for 10% of my portfolio because the job here is monthly income, not maximum growth. That's why HUTL gets 10%, not 100%. The rule behind the allocation. The easiest way I can explain this portfolio is that 65% doesn't depend on me being right. The other 35% is where I let myself have opinions. ZQT is a globally diversified core. QQQM is the intentional technology tilt. Individual stocks are the high conviction slice of my portfolio. HUTL is the income slice. Every part has one job. If I can't explain the job, I probably don't need the investment. How I'd pick the monthly number. After choosing the portfolio, I'd automate it. I set a monthly amount I can actually afford and have it move into the account without needing to make a fresh decision every month or however often I invest. To choose that amount, I need to know my income, expenses, debt, and savings goals because guessing is how people automate a number that looks good for two months and then suddenly they need that $100 for something else. That's exactly why I built my finance tracker. It gives you one place to see your net worth, investments, income, expenses, savings goals, debt. debt and monthly budget so you can work out what you can comfortably invest and watch your progress over time. You can find it in the description below. Once I know the sustainable number, I'd automate the contribution and keep the $65, $15, $10, $10 split. At $500 a month, that split is $325 into ZQT, $75 into QQQM, $50 into AQTL, and another $50 into individual stocks. $50 doesn't go far across five companies, so I'd use fractional shares or put each month's $50 into one company and then maybe rotate. I also wouldn't sell anything to rebalance. Each month, I'd check which slice of the portfolio has drifted furthest below its target and send that month's contribution there first. It's the same idea as me moving from VFV to ZQT. I don't have to sell what I own, I just change where the next dollar goes. What I would avoid in 2027. The first thing I'd avoid is buying whatever has the most attention because everyone seems to be making money from it. Every year has a new stock, sector, crypto asset or ETF designed to make you feel late. The second thing I'd avoid is collecting ETFs without checking what they own. A Canadian beginner might own VFV and then add a NASDAQ 100 ETF like QQQ, because one sounds like the S&P 500 and the other sounds like technology. But VFV already holds companies like NVIDIA, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Broadcom, and Meta. The Nasdaq 100 can repeat many of those same names. That doesn't automatically make the combination bad. It means you're intentionally overweighting many of the same companies, whether you realize it or not. The third thing I'd avoid is optimizing for yield. I love income, but a 10%, 15%, or 20% yield doesn't tell me whether the investment is good. I care more about the total return, the holdings, how the ETF makes money, the fees and the trade-offs. The fourth thing I'd avoid is letting individual stocks grow into the foundation before I have a core. I can research businesses and still be wrong. You don't need to find the next big thing to become wealthy. What consistency could look like over 32 years? Here's one illustration of why the monthly habit matters more than finding the perfect Starting with $500. Add $500 every month, use an illustrative 10% annual return, compound it annually, and run it for 32 years from age 28 to 60. This calculator gives the ending value of $1,217,383.49. Of that, $192,500 is money I put in myself over the next 32 years. Everything else is growth. If I drop the return to a more conservative 8% The same habit ends at $811,149.77. Still a big number built from the same $500 a month. Of course, this isn't a forecast or a promise. 10% is an assumption. Real returns are uneven. Even fees and taxes can change the results and some years will be negative. The useful lesson is that a repeatable contribution can become much more powerful when it has decades to work If I were starting again in 2027, I'd build a portfolio I could understand and keep. I'd clear expensive debt, build an emergency fund, and choose a monthly amount I can afford. I'd open a TFSA and confirm my contribution room. Then I'd put 65% into VTI, 15% into QQQ, 10% into a small group of individual stocks, and 10% into an income-focused ETF. I'd automate the contribution, look under the hood before adding another ticker, and judge the portfolio by the job each investment performs. The boring part would do most of the work. I still have opinions, but I wouldn't make my financial future depend on all of them being right. And if you're starting from the very beginning and want the actual order of operations for opening an account and making your first investment, watch How to Start Investing for Beginners in 2026 next.