Am I over extendind [too many individual stocks] in my joint account? (IRA, fund)

[nutnfancy]

I have about 25 percent of our wealth in equities. I was wondering if I had too much in different individual stocks and should sell off and wait for a correction. If I do that do I diversify like I am now or limit it down? I have also IRA accounts but this is in our joint account we have

Stock Dollars
AA 4300
ACMP 7500
BAC 1350
BP 24675
BUD 9200
COP 40500
CPL 2100
DBD 1100
DDD 4850
DUK 3500
ED 27100
F 2700
GE 2300
JCI 400
KMP 4100
KO 8500
MRK 1200
OLN 2200
PBR 2000
PFE 1400
PG 7000
PSX 9000
PZE 900
RGR 1200
SD 1600
SNE 1000
SO 13000
SWHC 600
T 2300
VLAX 300
VFLTX 6300
VLO 1000
VZ 1200
WM 1100
WY 6700
XMO 41300
YGE 300

Any of these look like a bad investment? I reinvest the dividends. I was also thinking of selling off most of them and buying 3 month options to buy at current price in case of a mass sell off in the next month. Ideas? Even at the last sell off I am up about 10 percent over all at this moment.

[mysticaltyger]

I am sure you're not "over extendind", although you might be overextended.

[EugeneOnegin]

I would say that if you don't have the time and desire to closely follow all of those, do the due diligence, and keep on top of them, then yes.

Some of those you don't really need to follow that closely though, like XOM. But still you might be better off putting a lot of that money in SPY and then trading 4 or 5 stocks that you can focus on and pay more attention to.

[sholomar]

You do have a number of stocks that are not necessarily standouts that could be sold in exchange for a broad based etf if you wanted too.. that's totally up to you though and your market strategy.. if you are going to take some off the table for potential corrections or just hold for the long term. You do have a number of stocks that should have been sold in the last couple weeks, such as KO that were really high, but you are still fairly well positioned. One has to consider if they want to lock in a long term capital gain too vs a short term.

I've mentioned this in other threads, but I use broad based ETFs and take some off the table when the bullishness levels reach 90-95% using this chart

$BPINDU

I don't always time the getting back in part precisely but it still has netted better results than just holding stocks when bullishness levels are that high. So you're talking about making major changes of position from stocks to cash and back to stocks maybe once a year. It's possible to do it more often but it's more risky that you miss more upside. Waiting until 90-95% is pretty foolproof. NOW is still a good time to take some profits, unless the dow opens down 200+ points Monday morning.

Oh... here's one for ya I have not posted here before... nasdaq bullishness level.. When nasdaq bullishness approaches and exceeds 65%, it's another signal for me.

$BPCOMPQ

Disclaimer: This is not financial advice.

[eskercurve]

How in the world do you keep track of all those companies? Did you just pick them out of a hat from various sectors?

The simple fact that you're here means you already know the answer: yes. Thoreau had the best advice for you: "Simplify ... simplify."

For what you have in your portfolio, I would wager that you could probably sell most of them for an S&P 500 ETF, plain and simple. Keep some of the bigger names for their dividends to reinvest, but dump the low dividend stocks for a low cost ETF (less than 0.75%, which covers around 90% of the ETFs out there).

[mcb2013]

Without knowledge of your initial buy price and date I don't know if anyone could really assess this.

You could set up a free google or yahoo finance portfolio to track these after entering in your initial purchase price and date you could see (except for reinvestment of dividends - you might need quicken to do that) your gross returns

The large dollar positions seem solid enough, XMO? I assume you were in XOM - Exxon Mobile.

My personal investment mantra is always "invest in what you know or understand" - in your case I hope you work in or around the energy / oil business. My second mantra is that most financial / asset managers / advisors don't know what they're doing. You can't "beat the market" and their only focus is on return to guarantee their bonus.

If nothing else I'd say you were a bit heavy on energy stocks.

[Listener2307]

Originally Posted by nutnfancy

Am I over extendind [too many individual stocks] in my joint account?

Yes, I think so. In fact, I think you are ridiculously over-extended.

[bbnetworking]

too diversify, might as well buy the S&P 500 index.

[LongArm]

Yep, in my opinion, if you're going to hold more than 10-15 individual stocks, you might as well invest in index funds.

[Sage 80]

You have way too many stocks to manage them all effectively. So, yes you are over extended.