# Build a Simple Portfolio: Free Beginner ETF Course

> As of Nov 11, 2026, ETFIQ Academy’s Build a Simple Portfolio course has 6 free beginner lessons on real ETF data, about 38 minutes in all.

Data as of Nov 11, 2026. Rebuilt every trading night.

## Build a Simple Portfolio

Data as of Nov 11, 2026. Rebuilt every trading night.

As of Nov 11, 2026, ETFIQ Academy’s Build a Simple Portfolio course has 6 free beginner lessons on real ETF data, about 38 minutes in all.

Build a Simple Portfolio · 6 lessons published 1 2 3 4 5 6

Start the course

### Lessons

- Stocks, bonds and cash: the three building blocks Lesson 1, 6 minutes

- Diversification: why one holding is not a portfolio Lesson 2, 6 minutes

- What a benchmark is, and how to pick the right one Lesson 3, 6 minutes

- Sector and theme funds: what they really add Lesson 4, 6 minutes

- How to compare two funds on the facts Lesson 5, 7 minutes

- Rebalancing: why your mix drifts and when to reset it Lesson 6, 7 minutes

### Your progress

Finish all 6 lessons and get 2 of 3 right on each quiz to earn the course certificate. 0 of 6 lessons passed on this device.

### What you learn

- What stocks, bonds and cash each do in a portfolio, and how the mix sets both growth and the worst fall

- What diversification protects against, why weight matters more than the number of holdings, and how to measure overlap

- What an index, an index fund and a benchmark are, and why a fund must be judged against the benchmark that holds what it holds

- What a sector or theme fund adds to a broad fund: more weight in fewer companies, shared names counted by the smaller weight, and bigger swings

- A four-step way to compare two ETFs fairly: what they hold, the same time window, risk next to return, and cost

- Why a mix drifts away from its weights, how rebalancing keeps the risk chosen, and what it costs

### Where to next

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Source: ETFIQ, independent ETF data. Recomputed nightly from public filings and prices.
Cite: ETFIQ, Build a Simple Portfolio: free ETF course, data as of Nov 11, 2026. https://etfiq.com/academy/build-a-simple-portfolio/
Licence: https://etfiq.com/license/ Data ETFIQ computes is free to use with attribution: ETFIQ (etfiq.com). Issuer data stays under its owner's terms.
HTML: https://etfiq.com/academy/build-a-simple-portfolio/