Is your investment portfolio heavily tilted towards equities? Or are you a risk-averse investor choosing to put most of your money in fixed income? Or are you one of those who buy gold whenever you have investable surplus?

Building your investment portfolio is an ongoing process and concentration on any single asset class may not be the best investment strategy. For best returns and steady gains one needs to spread their investment over different asset classes to balance out risk related to specific assets at different investment cycles.

It is always good to be mindful of portfolio risk and that's where diversified portfolios come into picture. A diversified portfolio should have a blend of equity, commodity, fixed income, real estate and other alternative investment tools.

Investors to periodically rebalance their portfolio. If the time horizon for investment is long, market volatility should be either ignored or it should be leveraged to accumulate good quality stocks. Volatile markets are also periods where portfolios should be rebalanced to maintain the investment ratios of debt and equity among other assets. If a current investment portfolio does not have a fixed income component or the debt component is under represented it's always advisable to get some exposure. If the risk tolerance is low we would advise to get some exposure through balanced mutual funds which have both equity and debt component