Diversification: How many investment positions do you have at any one time

[corydorus]

for me, around 40 ( 2 pages on SCB website). Largest position is about 10% of the total. All are small caps, many are illiquid or heavily manipulated.

How's your returns so far and hoe many years of practise ?

Seems to take a lot of guts with portfolio swing. Any painful experience ?

[gautam]

i think the main thing is one's comfort level whether he adopts the focused approach or the diversified approach. Both can create meaningful wealth if done properly. No right or wrong.

For my case, I use the focused approach of having 3-5 stocks and holding for a long time, with criteria with I have aluded to in my earlier posts. Risks are greater since if a single stock turns against me, my portfolio will suffer a significant setback. Thus, I use knowledge to reduce such risk. Risks cannot be totally eliminated. Many weeks or months would have gone by before I start buying with much greater weightage on the risks of entering than the benefits of doing so, which could also take the same amount of time. My thinking and doing is that ultimately, one will only need to multi-bag a meaningful sum a few times over a few decades, not necessary in succession, and he would be far ahead of the rest.