Quote:
Originally Posted by lewdog
I definitely agree, although it's not inherently bad to have a small percentage of your income in individual stocks if you feel so compelled. This should only be after you've got something like 10%+ percentage of your income going to retirement investment vehicles (401k/IRAs).
I bought my first individual stocks earlier this year as well. That's after 5 years of ramping my 401k/Roth IRA contributions up to 15%. The money I then invested in individual stocks is IN addition this amount, not in place of those investments. It's currently 6% of my total portfolio and I don't really plan to ever have individuals stocks be more than 10% of my total portfolio.
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I really like this approach. You've built a really solid core portfolio at this point, and with some disposable income you've deemed it appropriate to take on some manageable risk in exchange for some higher returns.
The pitfall I see others falling into is investing too heavily into stocks and penny stocks before they've built a portfolio when their real goal should be to build a baseline of wealth. It can be frustrating to lose on some penny stocks early and be compelled to stay with that strategy to try to make it all back. Similar to a gamblers mentality.
You feel much less obliged to take unnecessary risk when your percentage of investments as a whole are making satisfactory returns.