Keep in mind that fpacx will allocate to a higher percentage in stocks when the perceived value is there ... not sure it matters anymore with fiscal and monetary inputs but for certain the market is at elevated valuations ...

I got your point.
The market has been at 'elevated valuations' for almost all of my 55y investing, except for that late '70s / early '80s dip and that short plunge 15y ago. I gave up worrying, though I am known to sell when I (totally imperfectly) deem things crazy-frothy.
Now it's well over double p/e (shiller anyway) its median of 16.
There's little helping someone who cannot stick with it, imo. I don't think 2/3 cash or whatever is it. Not saying stock prices aren't way high.

Half cash and half balanced? For a young worker? Just no

An optimal portfolio for many young workers (early 20s to mid 30s)
would be allocated predominantly, if not entirely, to equities.
After all, young workers' risk capacity is great and equities
generate the highest long-term returns.
But what if an inexperienced investor has never encountered
a nasty bear market like the Global Financial Crisis?
It's possible some investors may panic and sell equities when prices are extremely depressed.
Then they may decide to remain out of the "market" for years failing to capture tremendous gains.
Would it be beneficial for certain investors to start with a lower equity allocation (maybe 50% - 60%)
which can be increased after they gain experience and discover their true risk tolerance?

+1
It’s difficult to draw a line in the sand (or concrete). But if you’re under 40, dollar-cost averaging in and planning to work at least 20 more years … put it in a good low cost growth fund and let it rip. No more than 3 funds I’d say. You can withstand the +35% and -35% market whipsaws with that kind of time horizon.
I get the feeling from our friend @Joyes that his situation is different - probably an older investor.

FPACX is 38% non-equities, so that plus half cash is nuts.
"certain investors" should be in AOR or FPACX and that's it, sure; or half VONE and half ~5% money market.
Kind of a silly speculative discussion.

Half cash and half balanced? For a young worker? Just no

An optimal portfolio for many young workers (early 20s to mid 30s)
would be allocated predominantly, if not entirely, to equities.
After all, young workers' risk capacity is great and equities
generate the highest long-term returns.
But what if an inexperienced investor has never encountered
a nasty bear market like the Global Financial Crisis?
It's possible some investors may panic and sell equities when prices are extremely depressed.
Then they may decide to remain out of the "market" for years failing to capture tremendous gains.
Would it be beneficial for certain investors to start with a lower equity allocation (maybe 50% - 60%)
which can be increased after they gain experience and discover their true risk tolerance?

Until @Joyes replies to the MFO board's inquiry, we are all guessing.

True. There is a big difference between being 25 years old and 75 or 80 in investing posture. Sounds like @Joyes has little experience. Maybe he / she is quite young and new at the process. Or possibly an older individual seeking to invest a recent windfall like an inheritance or cash-out from an employer.
@BaseballFan - One guru I actually pay for monthly market analysis has had his readers at 58% equity and 42% T-Bills most of the year. I don't want to say who because it would violate my terms of use. But obviously that call has not been optimum YTD. Yet ISTM it’s hard to criticize someone wanting to make 5%+ in cash instruments. I recently upped my allocation to 44% equity from 37% when an opportunity came along. But like you I remain cautious.
If the FOMC should cut rates next week I think it would juice the markets. Most of the experts don’t expect a cut that soon. But my view is more sanguine.

what no one has mentioned yet is what kind of career track/profession is @joyes in?
If they are a physician, plumber, electrician etc..their work path is more "somewhat guaranteed in the future" so they might be more aggressive in their portfolio. If they are a real estate agent, programmer, where their future earnings might be lumpy or impacted negatively by AI, they might consider being way less aggressive in their portfolio.
I have personally worked with many young(er) colleagues, many starting out their careers, in their early to mid-20's and have found without a doubt (and I am more certain of this as anything I have ever posted on this site, political views included (Ha!) as I've seen it first hand many times) is that if you suggest to them "oh, you are young and have many years to invest, be aggressive, 90-100% in stocks", at the first draw down of over 15% they will bail and go all to cash. To someone without a lot of money, $20k going down to $13k is not something they are going to just watch happen.
Therefore, my suggestion for consideration and NOT ADVICE, would be to stay 50/50 in cash/Tbills and the other half in something like FPACX FPA Crescent..a fund that has been around a long time and is not super aggressive.
Don't gamble, don't overdo the booze, stay away from the floozies/bar flies, go home after work, don't go to the bars, stay fit, think for yourself, don't smoke, save at least 15% of your paycheck every pay day, don't care what others think or post on social media.
Good Luck and Good Health to ALL,
Baseball Fan

Thanks for the correction @davidrmoran. (Regan / Reagan.)
FD did not say anything untrue. He merely “misread” my original post where I referenced a hypothetical 40-50 year time-frame. His examples did not meet that criteria.
- I did not recommend @Joyes invest in the S&P 500.
- I did not recommend that he diversify.
- I do not believe diversification produces higher returns then a more focused portfolio.
@Joyes stated, ”I'm looking for tips on how to diversify my holdings in order to increase my portfolio over time.”
I honed in on that single sentence. Diversifying beyond what he already owns would likely lower his returns. But diversifying might reduce his risk level making it easier to ride-out extreme market fluctuations.
Please note - None of the diversifiers I mentioned is meant to be a recommendation. They merely suggest that diversification can extend well beyond just stocks & bonds.

@Joyes
One of the most helpful things I encountered when beginning an investment journey was to purchase and devour materials which covered aspects considered helpful for new investors as well as more seasoned folks with more capital. Upon graduation from college, my parents purchased for me a subscription to Kiplinger. I still have that subscription some 45 years later. Many sample portfolios are included in the magazine as well.
Barron's was mentioned previously, but I'd suggest Kiplinger for someone starting out. It's a great tool for learning and becoming familiar with investments.

Diversification by itself is too generic, which is why I made my point.
So again, if you are diversifying in just RE, stocks, CEFs, commodities. They are not guaranteed to be better than SPY.
I remember so many posters quoting Merriman, saying your stocks must be diversified, just to come short in the last 15 years.
The next 10 years can be different than the last. I don't care what happened 50 years ago; I only care what the next years will do.
Basically, diversification is just a buzzword; the devil is in the details.
Example: If you invested in one of the most recommended bond funds, the US total bond index, VBTLX=BND, it made 1.5% annually in the last 10 years. The performance matches MM with no volatility, see (chart). BND has been a pretty bad choice, IMO.

FD - You misread my sentence. I said ”after 40-50 years”. PRWCX did not even exist 50 years ago.. David Giroux was 1 year old at the time.
Diversification means having different asset types - like stocks, real estate, bonds, cash, commodities, precious metals and non-dollar currencies
Diversification also includes investment styles like growth, value, momentum, technical based, risk-premia, market neutral, long-short, options based, and several others.
Diversification also includes geographic area (ie domestic, international, regional).
Diversification also includes instrument type like OEFs, CEFs, ETFs, stocks, bonds, collectables, hard assets.
Within bonds or bond funds diversification means owning a range of credit quality (from AAA down to C-). It also includes a variety of years-to-maturity & duration.
How can you say that a combination of several of the above (pick 6-8) over 50 years would have beaten the S&P or would have presented a higher overall year-to-year risk profile?

@hank

Diversification doesn’t guarantee better returns. Generally, diversification reduces risk and lowers longer term performance. If you can, throw 100% into a single low cost S&P index fund, shut your eyes for 40-50 years while ignoring the markets. Then take a look. Chances are you’ll have more money after 40 or 50 years than you would have had in a more diversified portfolio.

The above is a myth. All you have to do is see the performance in the last 15 years of SPY compared to SPY+IWN+EEM or compared to PRWCX. Both PRWCX+SPY have better performance and lower volatility = higher Sharpe ratio. When US LC doing well it's difficult to beat them.
See results (link).

Most people who lived through the Great Depression beginning in 1929 wanted nothing to do ever again with investing. By some accounts, it was around 1950 when equities got back to their 1929 levels. Not many of us date back quite that far. However, most of us here lived through the ‘07–08 ”great financial crisis”. Domestic blue chip stocks / stock funds tanked about 50% over that 16-17 month period. International stock funds fared worse, some falling 60-70%. Only the very highest rated bond funds held up. Some funds invested in junk bonds lost 50-60% over that time.

You have just proved my point. Did diversification in other stock categories help you?
The only true diversification is thru bonds, but again, it depends on the holdings.

“… tips on how to diversify my holdings in order to increase my portfolio over time.”
Diversification doesn’t guarantee better returns. Generally, diversification reduces risk and lowers longer term performance. If you can, throw 100% into a single low cost S&P index fund, shut your eyes for 40-50 years while ignoring the markets. Then take a look. Chances are you’ll have more money after 40 or 50 years than you would have had in a more diversified portfolio.
But, is the above realistic?
Most people who lived through the Great Depression beginning in 1929 wanted nothing to do ever again with investing. By some accounts, it was around 1950 when equities got back to their 1929 levels. Not many of us date back quite that far. However, most of us here lived through the ‘07–08 ”great financial crisis”. Domestic blue chip stocks / stock funds tanked about 50% over that 16-17 month period. International stock funds fared worse, some falling 60-70%. Only the very highest rated bond funds held up. Some funds invested in junk bonds lost 50-60% over that time.
How would you react 10-12 months into the above saga with your portfolio down 35% from the previous year’s peak and the media ablaze with horror takes of loss and predictions of doom?
By a strange quirk of math, the % gain needed to get back to “break-even” is greater than the % lost. If your portfolio falls by 25% in one year you’ll need a 33% gain the following year to get back to break-even. If you lose 50% of your portfolio you’ll need a 100% return to get back to your old level.
Just food for thought.
All the recommendations in this thread are excellent. Putting a portfolio together is a very personal thing. No “one-size” fits all. My only “tip” would be to become a regular Barron’s reader. No single publication has done more to help me invest over the past 50 years. It’s not glamorous. It’s not really about mutual funds. And the articles are anything but consistent. You’ll read “bulls” and “bears” in the same issue. But it will get you thinking about money … money and risk.
Added Thought …
I like looking at model portfolios. T Rowe Price is noted for being a good asset allocator.
This LINK will take you to one of their web pages and a discussion of allocation, complete with pie charts. I have one minor gripe. That is they don’t include commodities in these sketches. While they can sometimes jump up and bite you, I think having 2%-5% in commodities / precious metals is a pretty good idea.

My thoughts re BLNDX...is I am passing on it as long as I can get 5%plus in tbills...why get greedy and screw around with the black box stuff?

Well said, I agree.

what @Graust says
it is possible you could leave things alone or indeed ditch SP500 fund
depending
btw your Bond funds is inaccurate (of course)
some of your questions can be answered with just a bit more googling on your part

OUCH,,,, just got my 2024 property tax bill on reassessed home values. Up 25% since last year!! From ~4k to ~5K/yr. Yikes!

Welcome @Joyes!
Please tell us the following:
1. Your age and when you plan to retire
2. If this is the majority of your investment assets, or if you have anything held anywhere else (most people have the majority of their investments in their 401k/work retirement account especially when first getting started)
3. How much you hold (as a percentage of the total in each fund)
4. What your risk tolerance is (are you ok with being down 20% at various times and will you stick with the same plan, or sell out and go more conservative?)
5. No need to mention dollar amounts, as this is a public online forum (ie, to protect yourself).
6. Thanks in advance!

So going back 30 or so years there were a bunch of investors called the turtle traders...one guru guy trained them up as CTAs... they all made a bunch of money
Some say they were just at the right place at the right time... commodity up cycle...trend following then hit a flat spot for quite a while
Maybe good place to be during stagflation cycle?
Trading currencies is tough, not that I would know but governments can flip the card table on you at any time
My thoughts re BLNDX...is I am passing on it as long as I can get 5%plus in tbills...why get greedy and screw around with the black box stuff?

Bought BIL,TPSC, WDC and am watching NVDA and may just sell and take profits. I have other stocks in the TECH sector. DG, BALL and SQM are big losers for me. Once they get below .5% of portfolio I will sell then watch them go up naturally. Good to see EW bounce back a bit.

I have been nibbling on bits and pieces of things that I own that are down big that day (recently a share here and there of GOOG, NVDA, LRCX, ASML, etc.). Last two days, bought a handful of shares of EW (it dropped from near $100 to $50’s yesterday), DXCM (similarly almost cut in half today), and SAIA (down $20-50 today). The first two are new positions, and tiny positions because I am a chicken haha. SAIA was an add.
Trimmed LLY down to 2 shares (should have done that $100 ago), as others are jumping on the weight loss bandwagon and will have better drugs (kind of like PFE’s Viagra was first, but later drugs were “better”). Read in a comment section on SA that a retired pharma salesman feels GLP-1s and the like will soon become like statins (basically commoditized and generic) due to their widespread health benefits. Also have added to other semi names over recent days (just a share or two at a time bc of my lack of confidence)—ARM, AMD, NVDA, etc.
In my mutual fund only account (cannot add money to this, but it’s a former 403b with current employer that migrated from Prudential to Fidelity), I have been adding in $100 increments to whatever is down. PRWCX remains my biggest holding in that account at >20%.
I’m probably too “growthy” for this current market, but then days like today happen and balances jump more. But down 5% or more in most of my/family accounts (from July peak).

@MikeM,
I can absorb up to 5% loss before exiting. But I am not going to increase it which means I am going to exit sooner than latter to reduce clutter in my portfolio. I have not found the magic pill / perennial longevity fund. When rates were low (pre-Covid), it was inexpensive to run these experiments but not so much now.
Edit: Every time I start a new position, I start hoping to increase it to a minimum 10% of portfolio. Sadly, most of the times I fold them without increasing from the initial position. Oddly enough, I seem to have more luck with individual stocks than funds and I spend very little time researching stocks and almost all of the time I spend on investments is trying out new funds, which makes me wonder quite often if investment outcomes are mostly luck.