[army]

Not sure why the other comments are so negative. I don't see how you can dispute that having a large part of your net worth in a single stock leaves you vulnerable if anything happens to it. There's also the fact that your fortunes are still very closely tied to your company's through unvested stock, bonuses, and employment. Regardless of how positive you are on your company, you're probably already sufficiently invested in it. I can't imagine any combination of individual situation and risk tolerance that would make holding a large amount of a single publicly-traded stock an optimal investment strategy.

[MaulingMonkey]

> I don't see how you can dispute that having a large part of your net worth in a single stock leaves you vulnerable if anything happens to it.

Aye, it's not a diverse investment. Especially if you consider your employment a form of investment.

[zardo]

Don't forget your house, its value is dependent on the local economy, which could be tied to your employer. If you own a house in a town that is largely employed by ACME, and you work there, and you invest your money in ACME, if ACME goes under you lose your job, your retirement savings, and potentially the value of your home.

[cowls]

Agree, it seems like a pretty straight forward approach.

Having said that, one year out of university is a good time to take as much risk as you like so its not too important at that stage.

It may even help motivate if you know you will benefit financially if your company does well

[jklein11]

Diversification is the only free lunch in investing.[1] You can keep your level of risk the same while reducing your exposure to other risks.

[1]http://www.quanthome.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=a...

[wwkeyboard]

> I can't imagine any combination of individual situation and risk tolerance that would make holding a large amount of a single publicly-traded stock an optimal investment strategy.

It can make sense if you have a significant impact on the performance of that stock. It's pretty common to give the C-level executives a lot of stock in the hopes that they drive up the value of that stock. This is also what activist investors do; buy a lot of stock, get a position on the board, try to drive up the share price.

However, anyone taking advice from HN comments isn't in one of these situations.

[hkmurakami]

Since the RSUs are a significant (ex: 90%) part of their equity portfolio, it makes a lot of sense to diversify here. (It's like founders selling 20% of their stake at IPO and buying an index ETF with the proceeds)

I think this would be different if an engineer went to work for GOOGL at age 35. At that point their assets would be diversified across various equity and/or real estate holdings and the GOOGL shares would represent a large but not overwhelming portion of their equity holdings within their greater portfolio of assets.

[sdenton4]

I started with BigCorp at age 33, after leaving academia with a phd and equity measured mostly in magic: the gathering cards. So, uh, yeah. Assets.

- (I don't actually own any M:TG cards, which I use here as a glamorous stand-in for my actual hoarde of obscure tabletop RPG's, bits of electronics that could one day be synthesizers, and books about representation theory.)