Well, I used to have something like 120 individual equities. I have been trimming down and just now counted 88 stocks. In case anyone is curious, this was how it happened to be such a mess.
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Then, I thought perhaps I should own some retail stocks. Not being able to choose between my top 2 choices, Costco and Target, I added both. How about agriculture next? And mining, and chemical, and metals? When I added a sector, I usually could not decide what was the top stock in that sector, and usually ended up adding a couple.
My array of stocks also grew in other ways. For example, I saw that I liked to shop at Lowe's more than Home Depot. So, I bought Lowe's. That worked well, and I was gratified to see Home Depot kept sliding in sales compared to Lowe's. But then, when Nardelli was canned as CEO of HD, I decided that it was time that HD would turn around. So, I sold half of my shares of Lowe's and "rebalanced" that into HD, and ended up owning both, for a while that is.
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I have been thinking about cutting back and use only ETFs, but that takes time as old habits die hard.