Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accounts?

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nisiprius
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Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accounts?

Post by nisiprius »

Idle curiosity sparked by another thread about a broker that claims to be offering zero commission stock trades.

The Vanguard Inflation-Protected Securities Fund has only a couple of dozen individual issues, and I have almost that many individual TIPS myself. (And I'm sorry I do, it's a royal PITA). Vanguard Wellington Fund has only 101 stocks, and it is certainly thinkable that a fairly ordinary, rather enthusiastic, only slightly wealthy retail investor could hold that many (Wellington's 705 bonds might be trickier!)

Is there anybody out there holding several hundred individual stocks or other positions in their account, and what's it like? What happens if you try to transfer an account with hundreds of positions in it "in kind" to a new broker? Is there any limit to the number of lines on Schedule D you can submit for E-filing taxes? Do you pay commissions or are you a high-roller that gets comped?

(Uh, a mutual fund counts as only one "holding" or "position." I mean of course the number of line items on the brokerage statement. VTSMX counts as one, not three thousand!)
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MnD
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by MnD »

Dodge and Cox International has $53.6 billion spread over just 81 positions.
Similar story for Dodge and Cox stock. $54.8 billion over 71 positions.

I've seen wrap accounts of individuals managed by full service brokers with not super high balances (less than $1M) with 100-150 positions. :(
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by Bill M »

Only 160*. And "royal PITA" isn't strong enough to describe it. I wouldn't even attempt an "in-kind" transfer, rather I'd liquidate and transfer cash. Plan is to reduce the number down below 40 in the next 5-8 years (doing it the cheap way is slow, waiting for bonds and CDs to mature).

The asterisk is for I-Bonds. I count them as three accounts (TreasuryDirect for me, TreasuryDirect for DW, and TreasuryDirect for Converted Paper Bonds). Three seems right, since I can't transfer them anywhere, nor "manage" them in ways I can other accounts. If you instead want to count line items on statements, there are 14/year, 12 of which come from the way USTreas divides up the $5K tax refund into multiple small denomination IBonds.
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nedsaid
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by nedsaid »

I do have what most Bogleheads would say are a lot of individual positions in my accounts. But no where near 200 and certainly less than 100.

And even at that I have maybe three portfolios that are invested in similar fashion, so the "individual positions" are really less than what they appear to be.
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by steve_14 »

I find what works in the bedroom also works in my portfolio - three or four positions is fine, and anything beyond six doesn't add much to the experience...
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by bpp »

Over 100, but less than 200. Mostly individual stocks (DIY index), plus VT and some bond ETFs.
Not particularly wealthy.
Is there anybody out there holding several hundred individual stocks or other positions in their account, and what's it like?
Bit of a pain in the neck, but that is mostly because I have to keep track of all positions in two different currencies.
If I only had to worry about Japanese taxes, it would be trivial, because the broker takes care of all that paperwork.

But, well, what can one do? It's either that or do PFIC paperwork.
(Would you prefer root canal, or un-anesthetized tooth extraction via sledgehammer?)
What happens if you try to transfer an account with hundreds of positions in it "in kind" to a new broker?
Never tried. Don't know, but don't imagine it would be a big deal.
Is there any limit to the number of lines on Schedule D you can submit for E-filing taxes?
Don't think so, but have never had need to push the limits, having only ever tax harvested a few stocks per year at most.
Do you pay commissions or are you a high-roller that gets comped?
Ha ha! Definitely not a high roller. Pay full retail commissions. (Though try to pay as few as possible, of course.)
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by lazyday »

I may have gone over 200. Certainly over 150.

Mostly in tax advantaged accounts. I try to trade infrequently especially in taxable. Data for taxes could be a nightmare depending on how well you automate it. For example some brokers allow you to setup an alternate ID with limited permissions. I believe with some brokers you can use that ID with TurboTax to automatically do taxes. Because of relatively few trades, I never needed to automate.

The biggest two hassles for me have been:

- Rights offerings. You must sell or exercise your rights before they expire, or you suffer significant dillution.

- Shareholder lawsuits. You must fill out paperwork and provide brokerage account info to participate, or you will suffer dillution. The % is usually very small. Some may not be worth time for small investors.

It seems to me that rights offerings are uncommon for U.S. companies and lawsuits are uncommon for Ex-US. For me, rights offerings have been fairly uncommon but can have a very quick turnaround and be for relatively big $. You have to pay attention to avoid missing one.
I've had way too many shareholder lawsuits to deal with over the years.

There can also be various types of reorgs but I don't recall any that required action to avoid losing money. A few tender offers but it's been awhile so I don't recall if there was a penalty for inaction.

It's partly because of rights offerings and lawsuits that I began to pare down my portfolio and I now have probably under 75 individual companies. I prefer less individual company risk but also like less hassle. Recently, it's also helped that I've moved a bit into EM index.

There's a wiki page on the up and downsides of individual company stocks.
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by tyler_cracker »

steve_14 wrote:I find what works in the bedroom also works in my portfolio - three or four positions is fine, and anything beyond six doesn't add much to the experience...
can we put this in the wiki somewhere? :D

it's a little crass but i think it really cuts to the heart of the issue for certain demographics (e.g. 20something males).

:sharebeer
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by linenfort »

tyler_cracker wrote:
steve_14 wrote:I find what works in the bedroom also works in my portfolio - three or four positions is fine, and anything beyond six doesn't add much to the experience...
can we put this in the wiki somewhere? :D

it's a little crass but i think it really cuts to the heart of the issue for certain demographics (e.g. 20something males).

:sharebeer
It's all about convexity. That is, when curvature meets interest.
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by Levett »

I am pleased to hear it's not contango! :wink:

Lev
gerrym51
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by gerrym51 »

linenfort wrote:
tyler_cracker wrote:
steve_14 wrote:I find what works in the bedroom also works in my portfolio - three or four positions is fine, and anything beyond six doesn't add much to the experience...
can we put this in the wiki somewhere? :D

it's a little crass but i think it really cuts to the heart of the issue for certain demographics (e.g. 20something males).

:sharebeer
It's all about convexity. That is, when curvature meets interest.

i thought this article from USA today would be appropriate :mrgreen:


http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nati ... x/8281069/
stlutz
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by stlutz »

There was a poster here (can't remember who anymore) who had basically created his own microcap index fund with something like 100 or 200 holdings. Not sure what ultimately came of it except that he said it was more work than he had originally anticipated.
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by leonidas »

The most single positions I ever had at once was 39. Included a collection of DRIPs, funds stocks and options. I have a saner 18 now. I guess I had more time to manage them back before I became father of the year.
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by Kevin M »

nisiprius wrote: What happens if you try to transfer an account with hundreds of positions in it "in kind" to a new broker?
Don't know about hundreds, but I've done it with maybe 50, and it was no problem other than re-entering basis info at the new broker. Actually, now that I think about it, the Wells Fargo brokers did that for me--I just provided the basis info from a statement from previous broker (Interactive Brokers).
nisiprius wrote: Is there any limit to the number of lines on Schedule D you can submit for E-filing taxes?
I'ts not Schedule D but Form 8949 that gets long. EDIT: and of course it's only if you sell many positions that this comes up--just owning a bunch of positions has no impact. From the instructions on the form:
If more than one box applies for your long-term transactions, complete
a separate Form 8949, page 2, for each applicable box. If you have more long-term transactions than will fit on this page for one or
more of the boxes, complete as many forms with the same box checked as you need.
I sold a bunch of my individual stocks last year to raise cash and simplify my portfolio. My 8949 was seven pages; no problems e-filing Federal return.
nisiprius wrote: Do you pay commissions or are you a high-roller that gets comped?
100 free trades per year in my WF account. I paid small commissions at Interactive Brokers, but I mainly had that account because it had the cheapest option trading, and I was hedging some employee stock options by selling call options for a few years.

Kevin
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by gerrym51 »

I take the easy way out-my wife does our taxes :mrgreen:
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by topper1296 »

Most of my stuff is indexed, however I do have 12 individual positions right now and I'm looking to get into 3-4 more if they hit my price range. I can't see my self ever going over 20 and I can't even imagine what it would like to have 100-200. :shock:
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by cfs »

Wow

At one point in life I used to "collect" individual stocks. And now (based on the replies) I see that some of us have a mutual fund of mutual funds, in other words our very own "funds" of funds.

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Taylor Larimore
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Complexity vs. Simplicity

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Bogleheads:

Unless you are a full-time fund manager with a staff of security analysts (most don't do as well as an index fund) I can't understand why anyone would have more than a handful of securities.

This is the advice of investing authorities:
Christine Benz, Morningstar Director of Personal Finance: "Simplicity is one of the greatest--but in my view, woefully underrated--virtues when managing a portfolio."

Bill Bernstein, author of Four Pillars of Investing: "If, over the past 10 or 20 years, you had simply held a portfolio consisting of one quarter each of indexes of large U.S. stocks; small U.S. stocks; foreign stocks; and high quality U.S. bonds, you would have beaten over 90% of all professional money managers and with considerably less risk."

Richard Bernstein, Merrill Lynch strategist: "Investors find it hard to believe that ignoring the vast majority of investment noise might actually improve their performance."

Jack Bogle, Vanguard founder: ""In the stock market, the more elaborate and abstruse the mathematics, the more uncertain and speculative are the conclusions we draw therefrom.-- Simplicity is the master key to financial success."

Jack Brennan, Vanguard CEO and author of Straight Talk on Investing: "It's in the interest of many financial service companies to make you think that investing is difficult.--It's really quite simple."

Warren Buffet: "To invest successfully, you need not understand beta, efficient markets, modern portfolio theory, option pricing or emerging markets. You may, in fact, be better off knowing nothing of these."

Scott Burns, Columnist: "Concentrate on a simple portfolio with two basic assets--a stock index fund and a bond index fund. Do that and you'll enjoy superior performance with less risk."

Andrew Clarke, author of "Wealth of Experience": "In investing, simple is usually more productive than complex."

Jonathan Clements, author of "You've Lost It. Now What?": "Investing is simple. To be sure, you can make it ludicrously complicated."

Paul Crafter, author of "Investment Guide": "After doing it all, I now feel I've come around in a complete circle, ending up with this: The more I learn, the less I really need to know."

Michael Edesess, author of The Big Invesment Lie: "As a mathematician I know when mathematical-sounding analyses are little more than elaborate sales pitches, designed to thoroughly obscure the simple fact that smart investing is non-mathematical and accessible to everyone."

Albert Einstein: "The five ascending levels of intellect are: smart, intelligent, brilliant, genius, simple."

Charles Ellis, co-author of "The Elements of Investing": "KISS investing--Keep It Simple, Sweetheart--is the best and easiest and lowest cost and worry-free way to invest for retirement security."

Rick Ferri, CFA, author of "All About Index Funds": "It does not take much to outperform the average investor. All you have to do is put half your money in the Vanguard Total Stock Market and the other half in an intermediate-term bond index fund. Then rebalance your account once per year. By keeping it simple, you will achieve all the benefits the markets have to offer."

Future Metrics looked at the performance of 224 pension plans over about 14 years compared with the performance of 60% S&P 500 index and 40% aggregate bond index benchmark. Of those 224 plans, only 19 beat that simple benchmark.

Gensler & Baer, authors of "The Great Mutual Fund Trap": "If you simply buy and hold you don't need to read investing magazines, watch financial news networks, subscribe to newsletters, or pay a broker to execute new trades."

Benjamin Graham: "In the stock market, the more elaborate and abstruse the mathematics, the more uncertain and speculative are the conclusions we draw therefrom."

Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve: "This decade is strewn with examples of bright people who thought they built a better mousetrap that could consistently extract abnormal returns from financial markets. Some succeed for a time. But while there may occasionally be misconfigurations among market prices that allow abnormal returns, they do not persist."

Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Laurete: "All of us would be better investors if we just made fewer decisions"

Edmund Kean: "Complexity is easy. Simplicity is hard."

Michael LeBoeuf, author of "The Millionaire in You": "The master key to wealth can be summed up in just one word: Simplicity."

Leonardo da Vinci: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Peter Lynch, "Magellan Fund" manager: "If you spend more than fifteen minutes a year worrying about the market, you've wasted twelve minutes."

MIT study: "The less well-informed group did far better than the group that was given all the financial news."

Joe Maglia, CEO TD Ameritrade: "Wall Street goes out of its way to make investing incredibly sophisticated and complex because they can make a tremendous amount of money by doing so."

Burton Malkiel, author of "Random Walk Down Wall Street": "The overarching rule for achieving financial security: Keep it simple."

John Markese, CEO of American Association of Individual Investors: "If you have more than eight funds you should slap yourself."

Wm McNabb, Vanguard CEO: "If you can't understand an investment product in five minutes, walk away."

James Montier, author: "Never underestimate the value of doing nothing."

Morningstar Guide to Mutual Funds: "Good investing doesn't have to be complicated. In fact, simplification may lead to better investment results."

Suze Orman: "We make investing so complicated and it really is not. -- A total market index fund is a great one-stop-shopping choice that provides you instant diversification among different types of stocks."

Mike Piper, financial author: "There's an entire industry built on convincing us that investing is complicated."

Jane Bryant Quinn, syndicated columnist and author of "Smart and Simple Financial Strategies": "You shouldn't buy anything too complex to explain to the average 12-year old."

John Rekenthaler, Morningstar Research Director: "How many funds should you have? Four to six should do."

Rodc on Boglehead Forum: "While doing this financial engineering my wife who does no math just shook her head at my optimization games and said, 'Rod, life is uncertain, get over it.' After a lot of work I discovered much to my surprise, she was right."

Paul Samuelson, Nobel Laurete: "Investing should be like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas."

Bill Schulthies, author of "The Coffeehouse Investor": "When you simplify your investment decisions, not only do you enrich your life by spending more time on families, friends and careers, but you enhance portfolio returns in the process."

Chandon Sengupta, author of "The Only Proven Road to Investment Success": "There is overwhelming evidence that the simplest possible investment method works much better than all the other more complex ones."

Larry Swedroe, author of "The Successful Investor Today": "The more complex the investment, the faster you should run away."

David Swensen, Yale Chief Investment Officer: "As a general rule of thumb, the more complexity that exists in a Wall Street creation, the faster and farther investors should run."

Andrew Tobias, author: "I believe in selecting the most straighforward and easiest-to-implement strategy for achieving our goals."

Tweddell and Pierce, authors of "Winning with Index Mutual Funds": "Keep it simple. Investment success depends on asset allocation, diversification, and risk management, not on complexity."

Eric Tyson, author of "Mutual Funds for Dummies." "Planners may try to make it all so complicated that you believe you can't possibly manage your finances or make major financial decisions without them."

Walter Updegrave, editor of MONEY magazine: "Simpler is better. Ignore the siren song of sophisticated investments"

Richard Young, author of "The Intelligence Report": "If you can't run your portfolio taking 60 minutes a month, it's too complicated."

Jason Zweig, author of "The Intelligent Investor": "The less you fool with your portfolio, the less often you'll play the fool."

Warren Buffett: "There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult."
The Three Fund Portfolio

Best wishes.
Taylor
"Simplicity is the master key to financial success." -- Jack Bogle
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Re: Complexity vs. Simplicity

Post by bpp »

Taylor Larimore wrote:Bogleheads:

Unless you are a full-time fund manager with a staff of security analysts (most don't do as well as an index fund) I can't understand why anyone would have more than a handful of securities.
There can be very good tax reasons to hold lots of individual stocks instead of just index funds. No security analysis needed.
http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Passivel ... ual_stocks
This is the advice of investing authorities:
Their point is certainly good for many idealized cases, but alas, the real world can be much more complicated than that. One cannot simply "assume a spherical investor" in all cases. I suspect, for example, that none of those experts are US citizens living outside the US.
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by in_reality »

steve_14 wrote:I find what works in the bedroom also works in my portfolio - three or four positions is fine, and anything beyond six doesn't add much to the experience...
I see your point but have 62.

Having ended up at more than one brokerage, I have similar but not identical positions. This includes multiple individually held CDs.

I guess it's not ideal from a complexity standpoint but it's not all my own doing and I have a target AA that I am faithful too.
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by placeholder »

Right now including the same ETF held at multiple custodians and EE bonds but excluding cash I have 27 positions of which some are due to a slice/dice portfolio and some to opening brokerage accounts for bonus purposes.
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by bobbun »

The observation about IBonds is interesting, even if it's irrelevant coming from the custodial transfer paperwork point of view. I'm thinking about gradually buying some to replace the portion of my emergency fund currently held in short term bonds. Since they'll be useless as part of an emergency fund for a full year after purchase, I'm inclined to purchase them monthly over a couple of years rather than as a lump sum. That means that I'll have quite a few individual IBond positions by the time I'm done. Otherwise, I have never had more than ten different securities at once.
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by Random Musings »

Not even close in the past. However, I did own a limited partnership equity one time.

Even though it was a good trade, it made taxes more of a PITA.

RM
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by Runalong »

I limit myself to 50. Right now: 21 funds and 26 equities. I had been reducing the # of equities but further study has shown me that while my portfolio continues to do quite well, both the stocks I've sold recently and the stocks on my wish-list (meet my criteria but I lack cash to buy them) have been slightly outperforming those I hold. So I'm both selling too soon and buying too hesitantly! I purchase all equities at the same dollar amount (exception: BRK:B) and that amount increases as my portfolio increases to keep my limit at 50. But I think I'll keep the purchase amount where it is now, even as (if) my total portfolio value increases, so that I can own more equities as it appears that those that just barely fall short of my criteria are actually slightly better than those that I've been buying of late.
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by FNK »

Runalong wrote:both the stocks I've sold recently and the stocks on my wish-list (meet my criteria but I lack cash to buy them) have been slightly outperforming those I hold
Sounds like the market is telling you something.
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by Runalong »

"Sounds like the market is telling you something."

Yes, but I haven't quite figured out what. Although, going back now and analyzing more closely, I seem to have stemmed the problem somewhat in recent months since I cut back my trading from about 2/week to about 1/week. I currently don't have any big winners on my "wish" list and only one big advancer on my recent sell list (compare 8 stocks I sold between November and February that, between them, are up an average of 35% since I sold).

But this probably is the wrong forum to talk about this type of trading!
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nisiprius
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by nisiprius »

Very seriously. One of the worst effects of the 401(k) "system" and individual retirement accounts is that it practically forces complexity on any "mass affluent" working couple. There simply isn't any way to consolidate, and unless one wants to do a lot of fiddling--and has a compliant spouse willing to fiddle in perfect harmony--you end up with an untidy situation. It gets even worse if you decide, for whatever reasons, not to roll over your 401(k)'s with successive employers. (My wife and I have rolled them all over, but some people make subtle arguments for not doing that). And it is even worse if you are at Vanguard and have some non-Vanguard holdings (and aren't yet eligible for "upgrade") and thus have fraternal-twin Vanguard Group and VBS accounts.

Even if we just had 3-fund portfolios and no VBS accounts, at Vanguard alone we would have twelve positions--three each in his rollover IRA, his Roth, her rollover IRA, and her Roth.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness; Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by placeholder »

Runalong wrote:"Sounds like the market is telling you something."
Yes, but I haven't quite figured out what.
Perhaps: "Nobody knows nothing."
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by Tamahome »

Runalong wrote:"Sounds like the market is telling you something."

Yes, but I haven't quite figured out what.
Perhaps the comment was related to market timing? Something like an insinuation you should not do it? :beer
I'm not a financial professional. Post is info only & not legal advice. No attorney-client relationship exists with reader. Scrutinize my ideas as if you spoke with a guy at a bar. I may be wrong.
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Runalong
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by Runalong »

placeholder wrote:
Runalong wrote:"Sounds like the market is telling you something."
Yes, but I haven't quite figured out what.
Perhaps: "Nobody knows nothing."
I'll go with, "Never stop learning."

Anyway, knowledge is overrated. People study and study and study (equities and markets) and still lose. I believe in the Bogleheads' way (in theory) and recommend it to others, but I've been beating the market over the last 10 years by enough that trading is worth the time I put into it (plus, I enjoy it and having retired early I have the 10 hours a week to invest in it). But it's about emotion and temperament, not about having some edge in knowledge.

Stock picking is easy: I can all but guarantee (picking just one example out of many I could use) that Schwab's A rated stocks will out-perform their F rated stocks over the next year. But turning that simple bit of knowledge into actual gains would require figuring out how to sift through all those A stocks (too many), figuring out when to sell (the part I do OK at, but not as well as I'd like) and, more importantly, having enough of a detached attitude toward your investments that you don't do stupid things. Winning 60% of the time is like batting .333 in the majors but it still means you'll have long slumps when you begin to doubt everything, or streaks when you get cocky. Hardly anyone can handle that. I don't recommend what I do to anyone else and I wouldn't try to manage other's money professionally, I'd just send them all to Bogleheads or a 5 fund passive approach.
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Runalong
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by Runalong »

Dulocracy: I don't do market timing. This is about figuring out when to sell a stock. When I sell it I replace it with another. Each year I gradually decrease my overall allocation to stocks since I've gone from desperation (50 years old with a five figure retirement account) to a place where I'm becoming a lot more focused on asset preservation at age 60.
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Re: Anyone have over 200 individual positions in their accou

Post by Tamahome »

Runalong wrote:Dulocracy: I don't do market timing. This is about figuring out when to sell a stock. When I sell it I replace it with another. Each year I gradually decrease my overall allocation to stocks since I've gone from desperation (50 years old with a five figure retirement account) to a place where I'm becoming a lot more focused on asset preservation at age 60.
Take this with the joviality with which it is intended: Figuring out when to sell a stock... is that like determining what time the market conditions are best to make a transaction? :sharebeer
I'm not a financial professional. Post is info only & not legal advice. No attorney-client relationship exists with reader. Scrutinize my ideas as if you spoke with a guy at a bar. I may be wrong.
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