How many funds should I hold in my investment portfolio?

It's a good question, and it depends what you have. If you have a multi-asset fund

or a global index fund — a global shares ETF, for example — then one of these pick-and-mix funds can provide enough diversification for anyone. Most will have over 1,000 shares in them, which is plenty.

If, however, you are cherry-picking a handful of active funds — maybe some bond funds, some regional share funds, and possibly some sector-based funds such as tech, defence, or healthcare — then I'd suggest somewhere between 10 and 15 is reasonable. Those with higher balances and more complex affairs might head nearer 20. But too many more and it starts to get unwieldy. Some of your choices will also undo choices made by other active fund managers — one might underweight BP, for example, while another might overweight it — and so you can end up paying a lot to achieve the average. At that point you would have been better off buying a single tracker fund

The most I ever saw was a gentleman who wrote to me about his pension — he had 74 funds in it. Gulp.