Wick Capital Partners filed a Q4 2025 13F with $557.85 billion in reported assets and 203 holdings. At first glance it looks broadly diversified. Look at the weights and a different picture emerges.
The ETF Fortress
The top five holdings are all broad-market ETFs:
| Rank | Ticker | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ITOT | 23.4% |
| 2 | VTI | ~6% |
| 3 | IVVB | ~6% |
| 4 | IVV | ~5.5% |
| 5 | GBXA | ~5.2% |
Combined: 46.1% of the entire portfolio in five wrappers. This isn’t stock picking — it’s an allocation engine.
156 New Positions, Same Core
Wick added 156 new positions and exited only 7. That looks like massive expansion, but the ETF fortress at the top didn’t move. The new names broadened the toolkit without displacing the core implementation. Q4 was refinement, not reinvention.
Why “203 Holdings = Diversified” Is Wrong Here
When one ETF is 23.4% and the top five are 46.1%, the portfolio is:
- Diversified by underlying exposure (ITOT and VTI each hold thousands of stocks)
- Concentrated by implementation (a handful of wrapper decisions drive nearly half the portfolio)
The Allocation IS the Opinion
Choosing ITOT over a growth-heavy or sector-specific starting point is a deliberate view about diversification preference, tax efficiency, and risk budget allocation. Using multiple overlapping broad-market ETFs (ITOT + VTI + IVV) likely reflects platform preferences, liquidity management, or tax lot segmentation rather than duplicate thinking.
Originally published at 13finsight.com
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