I signed up for a Robinhood account about two years ago and bought a Motley Fool basic subscription. Since then, I found Stock Gumshoe and switched over to this site for much of my investing advice and ideas. After reading a recent post about buying and holding 25 stocks for 5 years plus, I realized I’m doing it all wrong! I have fairly small stakes (average about $100 each) in 70 different companies. What should I do now? Should I sell off the majority and focus on just my favorites, or continue holding all of these different stocks and just add to my top 25? Thanks for any insight you might have!
This is a discussion topic or guest posting submitted by a Stock Gumshoe reader. The content has not been edited or reviewed by Stock Gumshoe, and any opinions expressed are those of the author alone.
Personally there is nothing wrong with owning that many companies if you have your own conviction in the long term execution of the company and the commensurate return of the stock. If you have “borrowed” conviction from MF or Travis I would suggest that you relook at your holdings. Just ask yourself do I feel that this company will perform and is likely to generate a return I will be happy with. If it is yes then keep it. If the answer is no sell it and put the cash in one of the yes stocks. If the answer is I am not sure but Travis recommends it then hold it for a while and see if it moves to yes or no.
When I started investing approximately 40 years ago, one of the first things I convinced myself to do is “play for meaningful stakes” in order to make serious money.
For me that meant investing approx. 10% of my investment capital in a single stock, of course only after I did my own due diligence and monitoring the position closely.
Investing $100 each in a total of 70 stocks sounds like the approach of an investment fund. In general, such an approach usually does not yield much more than the S&P 500.