To understand how to build a portfolio, we need to understand what the term means and what it implies. This is necessary to understand what role a portfolio plays.
A portfolio is actually a leather bag, a type of briefcase. The original meaning of the word is simply a bag designed to carry documents in. It became associated with investments because in the early twentieth century, stockbrokers would keep each client's share certificates in a separate portfolio. From there onwards, the word gradually came to mean any kind of collection of documents. In finance, it specifically means the investments held by an investor, generally all the investments that an investor has.
