Jim wrote:
- quote -

That's a good way to put it - "mitigate returns" - but keep in mind it
happens just as well with the "negative returns" (which normal people
call losses!). A concentrated winning portfolio will be more of a winner
than one where the good picks are diluted by a bunch of average stocks.
But the concentrated losing portfolio will be that much more of a loser,
for the same reason.

If you have full confidence in your picks, then you won't need many
stocks - one really good one produces the highest returns! But nobody
should have that kind of confidence...as I put in another post,
"avoiding overconfidence" is a good general rule to apply when investing
- hedge the human factor. It reduces the down side when you pick wrong.
Adding more stocks to a portfolio makes a +30% above the index kind year
less likely, but it's the -30% below the index kinds of years that we
should worry about (you might never catch up again). And that's where
the stats analysis is interesting because when you look at the ranges of
stock returns, the percentage of stocks that do really poorly each year,
etc., it doesn't take all that many dart-tosses before you avoid getting
killed by a bad pick. Or put another way, picking several dogs becomes
that much less likely, and the impact of each is lessened.

Practicalities might point to fewer stocks, because there's a limited
amount of time to spend analyzing companies. Some people get to know a
few companies well and trade only those stocks. But when you do that I
think it becomes that much more important to keep an eye on your
performance. Because if the zero-analysis-required index fund would
leave you with more money, it's questionable why you'd bother with
individual stocks, except perhaps as a hobby.

I think "the problem" with many investors who pick stocks is that
they're looking to clobber the index when a 3% annual advantage, over
the long run, is excellent. It's kind of like card-counting in
blackjack, where all you need to do is shift the odds a tiny bit and
play for a long time, and you'll win. But most people sit down and look
to make it all on a couple of bets, so they walk away losers. Stock
picking is analogous because there is some reason to the whole thing,
but you have the unpredictability in there as well - the company might
be smoke & mirrors, or a jet might fly into a building tomorrow. So I
think it's important not to be the guy betting heavily at the blackjack
table; one way people bet heavily is buying few stocks.

I shouldn't complain about 8 I guess, apparently 1, 2 or 3 stock
portfolios are common. By comparison, mutual funds need to disclose when
they're "undiversified" and the number is much higher than that. I
believe it's 5% in any one holding for the typical fund - which is a
19-stock-or-fewer portfolio in the unlikely event that ALL of a fund's
holdings qualify it as "undiversified."

- quote -

Why though? After 30 years if you look back and say "well I would have
had more money, borne less risk, and had a lot more free time, if I'd
just put each invested dollar into an index fund" - would the lack of
security-level control matter? For most people who don't consider
"socially responsible" factors when investing, I think the bottom line
is...well, the bottom line.

Not that all your money goes into stocks, but for the dollars that do,
and thus have all the inherent risks of stocks - does control really
matter? Isn't the goal, really, focused on gains, how much money flows
out at the end of the pipe? (absent the other things I mentioned -
mostly tax-related things that have the effect of increasing your
after-tax returns, ie money flowing out of the pipe).

- quote -

=) I also like "all generalizations are useless." My current favorite
T/bumper sticker is: "What if doing the hokey-pokey really IS what it's
all about?" Makes you think!

-Tad

Tad Borek <borekfm[at]pacbell.net> wrote in message news:<%p7Zb.14810$Kl.7493[at]newssvr29.news.prodigy.com> ...
- quote -

read that stock portfolios with more than 8-10 stocks tend to mitigate
returns- i.e. carrying more stocks after 8 or 8 did not increase the
gains of the portfolio.

- quote -

I would agree, I think the articles I'm referring to above even
suggest that 10-15 stocks give a similar result.
- quote -

If I were to own 30 stocks, I would pick sectors to invest in and
double up with small, large and international stocks. For example, if
we were talking about financials, I would have a large stock, a small
one, and one which did a lot of its business overseas in economies
other than the US.
- quote -

I think this is a key point of discussion. I think the goal is to
make money and have MORE CONTROL, not necessarily "beat the market".
In addition, the longer one HOLDS the stock, the cheaper it gets. I
buy a stock for a $4 fee. So if I spend $100, my expense ratio is 4%.
If I hold the stock for two years, that ratio is 2%, 8 years .5%, 40
years .1% I think stocks are cheaper to own if held long enough and
bought in large enough orders.
- quote -

control of what investments are used. Sectors give me ideas (liek
knowing which industries exist and which companies exist and thus
giving me buying ideas and opportunities).

- quote -

88.2% of all statisitics are useless. I read that on a t-shirt
somewhere...

- quote -

taxes (comment #1 and #2).

I think expenses need to be in here somewhere too.

- quote -

Could you monitor your holdings and sell the winners and buy the losers on a
regular (maybe annually) basis? If so, you might be able to do it on your
own. Rebalancing means buying and selling to get back to your target
percentages. That means if you start out with a 50/50 split between
domestic and international stocks (simple example) and international stocks
take off, you may end up with a 65 / 35 split in a year or so. Human nature
is to sell the 35% share and buy more of "the good stuff". If you fall prey
to human nature, you'll lose - BIG. Having somebody to encourage you, and
feed you facts about why selling the winners and buying the losers makes
sense, is a huge benefit.

Also, I doubt your broker will adhere to a strict model of X% large growth,
Y% large value, Z% mid blend, etc. They will likely tweak the portfolio
just a bit in favor of current market conditions. Very few brokers do this
to any extreme measure as it can be dangerous, but nearly everybody does
this to at least a minor extent. Will you keep up with the news of the day
to determine whether to overweight or underweight growth, for example?

Are you familiar with tax swaps? If the market goes down, will you sell and
move to cash "for a while"? Will you know when the "next big thing" comes
along and it's time to move away from ETFs? Do you know how to rebalance
your entire portfolio, considering everything, or do you feel comfortable
only rebalancing the ETF portfolio by itself? (If you have a lot of MSFT
stock in your company 401(k), for example, you probably want to reduce your
large cap ETF exposure, as well as your exposure to QQQ.

If you like actively traded funds but like the idea of ETFs, check out
PowerShares Market Portfolio. It's an awesome combination of low expenses,
above-average returns, transparency on holdings, etc. Beautiful thing.

There's a lot more work involved than rebalancing. I'm sure I've only
scratched the surface. That said, there are really only three requirements
to do it your self.

1 - You have to like it. If you don't enjoy working with it, you won't work
with it.
2 - You have to know what you're doing. If you like to search for and read
data and articles, that's great.
3 - You have to have (and devote) the time - If you have kids running around
or if you travel a lot, you may not be able to devote the necessary time to
do it properly.

The nice thing about paying a 1% fee is that everybody wins when the
portfolio goes up. If your portfolio goes down, the broker takes a pay cut.
:-)

"Andrew W" <andrewsfcaREMOVE[at]yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:MaadnQ67dpxSrKzdRVn2jQ[at]giganews.com...
- quote -

Jim wrote:
- quote -

I should explain that more...sorry if too much info...true
diversification comes somewhere north of 20 stocks so if that's the
goal, you'll need more. Some say 30, others 50, others 100 or more.

I think it's telling that the oddly-calculated Dow 30 is very highly
correlated to the S&P 500, which has 470 more stocks in it. Part of that
is because the Dow stocks are a big component of the 500 in terms of
weighting but still, it hints that 30 is getting pretty close.

[This is also, incidentally, one of the "problems" faced by an active
manager overseeing a large chunk of money. You need to buy a lot of
stocks, and eventually, it's difficult to avoid "looking like the
market" - rather, whatever part of the market you're investing in.]

But that's "diversification" with the goal of looking like the market. I
think if you're going to bother with individual stocks, you want to do
something different. Because if you really want "the market" you can buy
the S&P 500, or whatever, at very low cost. Most people buy stocks in an
attempt to beat the market, not match it.

So if the goal w/stocks is a bit different you might accept smaller
portfolios, even if they aren't diversified across all the industrial
sectors the way the "market portfolio" would be. You just want to
protect against bad decisions, and unpredictable events. How many is
enough for that? Really, I don't think the reasoning needs to get much
more complex than "if I pick one bad one it'll only be 5% of my
portfolio gone" and maybe that's OK. Or 4% - 25 stocks.

There's also a statistics approach to the question, where you assess the
likelihoods of multiple "failures" within the portfolio, but it points
to similar numbers - not much learned there. You may have seen this
graphically, portfolio variability (y) vs. # of stocks in it (x) looks
something like this, if you view this nonsense below in a fixed-width
font and imagine a curve linking the X's:

X
X
X
X
X
X
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ "market" return

1 3 5 15 30 100 stocks

That dotted line for the market return should actually be right against
the last X, because by 15 stocks the curve has largely flattened out,
and by 30, you really need to blow it up to see any separation.

OK so that's enough about the # of stocks...20+ diversifies away quite a
bit of the risk, whether you view it in terms of % of your holdings or
by the statistical likelihood of being very wrong more than once. If you
really want divesification, think about more, probably going to mutual
funds unless you've got a lot of money.

Back to your Q...it's helpful, though not essential, that the 20 be in
different sectors of the economy, or at least be lightly correlated.
This was part of the problem in the tech boom, I'd see stock portfolios
come in with - well think of the main names - AOL, Cisco, Intel, Dell,
JDS, HP, etc. - all tech. That's not diversified and a few of the names
had correlations of say 0.8 (1.0="the same thing"). One fell, they all
fell. Meanwhile banks and retail were doing really well, but a lot of
people didn't have any money there. So we see the stories of people
complaining "I lost 80% of my money." This is an investing 101 problem
really - any investor, and especially any broker or advisor, should know
better.

How many sectors is enough? I guess we need to start with, "what are the
options?" They're defined a few different ways, a good overview is the
"Industry Index" link off this page:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/
You can find similar stuff through S&P (www.spglobal.com); the Dow Jones
sectors are easily viewed through the corresponding iShares
(www.ishares.com).

The more you land under one of those listed sectors, the less
diversified you are, even if your money is divided into 20 piles. It's
not the end of the world but it should be done for a reason. As an
example I follow "out-of-favor" stocks and these sometimes happen across
entire sectors, so I might end up with a concentration in a those
sectors. Financials, after the asian flu & LTCM debacle, for example.

I could also see a rationale for focusing on a sector or two because of
your expertise, interest, etc. Maybe you know the insurers really well,
actively manage that by cherry-picking, and buy the rest in another
manner (like sector ETFs, for example). So that would lead to a
concentrated portfolio in one or a few sectors. There is a practical
problem with the better-diversified portfolios...maybe you don't have
enough time to spend on each holding (then again maybe you shouldn't
bother?).

- quote -

First off - to the extent I recommend holding individual stocks it's for
at least one of the following reasons:
1. they were there already, and selling causes tax problems
2. fancy tax management is desired - loss selling, charitable contributions
3. desire for returns & acceptance of deviation from indices

If none of those fit then I'd typically say - sell, and shift to funds.

If one does fit then the specifics would depend on what is driving the
need. Unless 1-2 prevent it, I'll in most instances shoot for 20-25
holdings in an all-stock portfolio; a bit fewer is acceptable if the
stocks are just part of an overall mix of investments. Most of the time
there would be shifts to funds as part of the diversification
process...a lot of people are 100% large-cap US Stocks and a simple
first step is adding other asset classes. The easiest way to do so when
freeing up say $20k is to buy funds. If this is just the "US stock"
sliver we're talking about, then I'd look to adding more holdings and in
the process, diversifying across sectors and asset classes based on
company size (large, mid, small stocks) and valuation (typically I tilt
it towards value stocks). Doing this might involve a mix of ETFs, mutual
funds, and individual stocks.

If it's going to be an all-stock portfolio run for reason #3, then it's
likely the old holdings would go away, replaced over time by 20-25
stocks. I focus on out-of-favor ("contrarian") stocks for that purpose,
but that's just the strategy I've decided upon. Good overview is David
Dreman's "Contrarian Investment Strategies." That's a separate topic
entirely and I welcome a discussion thread on it. Enough about boring
bonds, already!

-Tad

Tad Borek <borekfm[at]pacbell.net> wrote in message news:<y3RYb.14487$_X7.1614[at]newssvr29.news.prodigy.com> ...
- quote -

how may sectors would you have and could you give examples of these
sectors?

I can think of: Industrial, retail, medical, software, hardware,
financial, consumer, electronics.

this would imply an average of two stocks per sector?
- quote -

assume one would own individual stocks instead of the index... would
you up the number of stocks above (20 in your original post), or have
other ideas?

thanks.

Jim

"Tad Borek" <borekfm[at]pacbell.net> wrote in message
news:y3RYb.14487$_X7.1614[at]newssvr29.news.prodigy.com...
- quote -

Thanks SO much for this thoughtful and informative post... very helpful...

Your thoughts on the holdings are well taken and the one you mention is the
first one that I will be reducing...

Andrew

Andrew W wrote:
- quote -

In a way it wouldn't matter what stocks you listed, four stocks means
very-limited diversification. It's hard for me to think of many stocks
as a "safe bet" really. I work from the assumption that any stock has
the ability to fall rapidly in the wake of an unpredictable event
affecting that company. If it happens and you have four holdings, 25% of
your portfolio feels it. If it happens and you have 20, 5% feels it. So
that's an obvious benefit of holding 20 - no need to analyze it too much
really.

Rather than poke holes in each of these holdings, I'd simply state the
obvious - that with four stocks you have at most four sectors of the
economy represented; the four you mention actually bridge just three
(insurance, financial services, and retail). There are ties between
insurance & financials so some might argue you've got two basic sectors
represented, with retail being held up by one of the laggards in the
group (ie not Wal Mart or Home Depot or someone like that). So there's a
lot of the economy that isn't represented, and the value of your
investments will be somewhat tied to the behavior of those industrial
sectors.

I will share that I've reduced Sears in client accounts, though please
do not interpret that as a specific recommendation. Perhaps ask your
broker for his firm's opinions on the company, their recent sale of the
financial unit, and the prospects for restoring the profitability of
white goods & hardware vs. the big-box retailers. To the extent he has
access to any proprietary info about the stock's liquidity, ask why it
went to 18 bucks a share last year, and how likely it is to happen
again. Not that there are answers to all of these, only opinions - but
those are some things I'm curious about.

- quote -


In support of passive...keep in mind that the Russell 2000 index of
small-cap stocks was up 47% last year, and several international stock
categories were even north of that, with of course the index funds
tagging along. It was a tough year to do poorly, and a lot of the
"strong performers" actually didn't keep up with their benchmark
indices. And if you know of some well-run actively managed funds that
will beat their indices consistently in the future, I'm all ears! That's
the crux of the problem.

Anyway, for an individual investor contemplating only mutual funds, some
I'd recommend are:

"The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need", Tobias - title is minor
overstatement but it's entertaining and has a lot of good, basic info on
a variety of topics. A great start.

"Common sense on Mutual Funds" (or any of Bogle's books really) - from
the founder of Vanguard...the compelling case for index-based mutual
fund investments.

"A Random Walk Down Wall St" Malkiel - if there's a such thing as a
classic, this fits - a lot of discussion about many market-related
topics, but the conclusions are relatively easy to work with (no
surprise, "focus on passive funds")

Also a practitioner-level book is "Asset Allocation" by Gibson. A
slightly more accessible book on similar themes is Bernstein's "The
Intelligent Asset Allocator." Neither of these is really all that
difficult as long as you focus on the relatively simple conclusions
rather than the (over)extensive analysis. If they strike you as "more
info than you need" you may be right; if "Random Walk" feels that way
there's a chance the professional route might make sense.

-Tad

If you are comfortable handling issues such as rebalancing and asset
allocation, it may be worth it to do it yourself. If you don't have the
time or interest to do it right, the wrap fee is not a bad way to go. You
may want to talk with an independent planner and get a second opinion as to
suitability with regards to your own situation.

"Andrew W" <andrewsfcaREMOVE[at]yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:KL-dnSuIV5zSRK_dRVn2gA[at]giganews.com...
- quote -

"Ignoramus25700" <ignoramus25700[at]NOSPAM.25700.invalid> wrote in message
news:c0trp4$jjh$0[at]pita.alt.net...
- quote -

Sears, Morgan Stanley, Allstate, SunLife Insurance

Your thoughts?

"Tad Borek" <borekfm[at]pacbell.net> wrote in message
news:ucuYb.26860$hj3.22687[at]newssvr25.news.prodigy.com...
- quote -

Yes thats very much the case... although we did leave the portfolio
untouched for the six month alternate estate valuation date, so its time to
get things in motion

- quote -

Indeed... and as I noted in my other post, the four are Sears, Morgan
Stanley, Allstate and SunLife Insurance... fairly safe bets, but I would
want more diversification even if the shares were in GE, IBM and Microsoft

- quote -

Well although I am a late starter in investing, I have educated myself
pretty thoroughly in the past two years and have gained some knowledge...
but I am aware that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing... I have
gotten roughly 20% return in the past two years with a diversified, balanced
portfolio composed of about 5 Vanguard funds supported with some specialty
international and small cap funds, but I have never been tempted to do the
market timing or sector thing... I obviously dont expect to get those
returns over the long term, but I dont think that I need a huge amount of
hand holding... I have done well with well chosen, actively managed funds
although I think with this inheiritance I might tend towards passive
investments...

- quote -

Thats my question precisely... to me the benefit would be if someone was
handling the shift in a way that made things go smoother, but I'm not sure
that justifies the expense

- quote -

Love to hear those recommendations... I have just read the Mutual Fund Trap
book and it makes a pretty good case for passive management... but when you
look at the well run actively managed funds that can beat their indexes
consistently over the long term, you have to look at them... and they have
done well by me in my two years

- quote -

Thanks so much for your thoughts... they have been very helpful... as you
can tell, I know I can do this myself but I want to make sure that I'm not
making a mistake by having someone hold my hand for a year or so... a little
more thought is in order I think

Andrew

"HW "Skip" Weldon" <skip5700removethis[at]hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:fim4301umccv1q5rhic9ie8jd283fn3cro[at]4ax.com...
- quote -

Actually my mothers broker isnt pushing for me to do anything... in fairness
to him, he is not trying to sell me anything other than his 1% flat fee...
but he knows I am nervous being so centralized in just a few stocks (ok, the
stocks are Sears, Morgan Stanley, Allstate and Sun Life Insurance) and so he
suggested the iShares approach... I actually think all of his ideas are
fine, I am just thinking that there isnt really anything he is doing that I
couldnt do myself...

Andrew

"Jim" <noreplysoccer[at]hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:b7cb2d49.0402170815.4d0bb4cd[at]posting.google.com...
- quote -

I appreciate all of the thoughts and they are actually worth more than the
door charge

The reason for these stocks being held is my mother couldnt afford the
capital gains if she sold them... she was the model investor, never touching
her investments and letting them build up over time... a very long time...
but if she could have diversified she would have, so there is no sentimental
attachment to these stocks... and keeping them is actually not one of the
options I am considering... the main decision is staying with the broker or
going it alone and whether I should go with active or passive funds... thats
another topic, I know...

Thanks again for all of the thoughts

Andrew

Perhaps the OP could be comfortable enough to actually post the four
companies that he owns. That could give some of us some food for
thought as to whether he is obviously underdiversified, or not.

i

In article <fim4301umccv1q5rhic9ie8jd283fn3cro[at]4ax.com> , HW "Skip" Weldon wrote:
- quote -

I agree with such a correction.

A conflict of interest is just that, a conflict of interest. It is
possible that even with existing conflicts of interest, some brokers
would overcome then and render impartial, beneficial advice that is
the long term interests of the investor.

So, what is an investor to do? I would think thet becoming educated in
the world of investments is, more or less, imperative, and the
investor should insist that any advice is substantiated with logically
consistent and meaningful explanation. The investor should be
sufficiently educated to understand these explanations.

Even so, I would attempt to avoid conflicts of interest to the maximum
extent possible. A reasonably designed compensation structure could
help somewhat if the amount of money under management is
sufficient. Generally though, management of other people's money
always presents conflicts of interest.

i

Andrew W wrote:
- quote -

Andrew,
As others have said, there are few financial decisions that truly need
to happen immediately. You've got additional risk at the moment, but you
have some assurance knowing that the account has ticked along for
decades. It's not ideal but it doesn't sound like a fire alarm either.

But I strongly disagree with this idea that four stocks constitutes a
diversified portfolio - that just isn't enough and it exposes you to
risks that are completely avoidable. Every stock comes with
company-specific risks that are only diversified away by buying
different companies (preferably in different businesses/sectors). Even
picking four stocks that will be around ten or twenty years from now is
harder than it seems - many of today's leaders will be tomorrow's
dinosaurs, that's the cycle of things.

How to diversify is a different question - eg you could add other
stocks, or pare down the ones you've got and invest the proceeds in
complementary mutual funds (including exchange-traded funds like
iShares). The stepped-up basis makes it easier by removing tax concerns.
You do have the question of selecting the investments, and the decision
about whether to do that yourself.

Which brings up the broker - what will he be doing? If the task
contemplated is selling four positions and shifting the dollars to
iShares, then I don't know what the 1% would be buying. I know that some
firms in SF are doing that but I'm not clear on what services you get in
return. That's what it all boils down to: do you get enough to justify
that cost? Can you do it yourself without incurring that cost? Would you
rather do something else with your time?

Right now it sounds like the answer is no, you're not comfortable doing
it yourself, but also, you're contemplating going that route. If you're
interested I can suggest some books that I think every self-directed
investor should read. The task is probably fully in your ability, it's
more a question of whether you want to devote the time to it, or prefer
paying for some free time.

A separate issue I think is your other financial questions that might
come up in the context of making the investment decisions. You mentioned
that you have a CPA and that could be a source of help on the tax side
of things. You might pick your mutual funds and then face the decision
of how/where to buy them, to minimize taxes - and the answer might be a
mix of retirement accounts, college savings accounts, who knows what
else. Taxes might even rule out certain types of investments. Or perhaps
this might not be much of an issue. Still that isn't the kind of stuff
that is typically addressed by a broker - or they may provide general
info disclaimed "consult your tax advisor..." Meaning, you'll probably
still need your tax advisor (CPA) involved in this process.

-Tad

On Tue, 17 Feb 2004 12:10:19 CST, Ignoramus25700
<ignoramus25700[at]NOSPAM.25700.invalid> wrote:

snip

- quote -


I liked your suggestion that the investor take his time with this.
However, in fairness to "salespeople", we should acknowledge that
"salespeople" are not the only players in personal finance (or almost
any field) with potential conflicts of interest. In fact, we could
make a case that we all do. Further, the presence of a conflict does
not mean that the opinion rendered is wrong.

So to be fair, how about the following substitute for the above
paragraph: "...it only makes sense to take one's time to learn a
little bit about investing before dumping the current investments at
the insistence of those who have a potential conflict of interest."


-HW "Skip" Weldon
Columbia, SC

In article <b7cb2d49.0402170815.4d0bb4cd[at]posting.google.com> , Jim wrote:
- quote -

This is not devils advocacy, but rather, elementary common sense.

If you [the OP] know little, and someone else [the parent] knows more,
and chose a particular strategy that worked great, and as there is
obviously no conflict of interest between the intent of the deceased
parent and the heir, it only makes sense to take one's time to learn a
little bit about the stocks before dumping them at the insistence of
various salespeople.

- quote -

so would I.

- quote -

Sometimes four stocks provide a reasonable level of
diversification. It depends on what they are, and their prices.

i

In article <hrrYb.123$nI1.85[at]okepread05> , Brent D. Gardner, ChFC wrote:
- quote -

Let's review the original statement of the original poster:

``my mothers broker says lets move over to Barclays iShares (he would
charge me 1% per year plus the expenses of whichever iShares I
chose)''

That 1% per year that the brokerage would charge on top of the
barclays iShares, obviously will contribute to the salesperson's
commissions, as I stated. That's no rocket science.

In other words, I was right when I said ``These barclays iShares,
which will cost you [the OP] 1% per year, likely will pay him [the
broker] a good commission if he sells them''.

i

"Ignoramus17304" <ignoramus17304[at]NOSPAM.17304.invalid> wrote in message
news:c0rqko$qeh$0[at]pita.alt.net...
- quote -

Incorrect. iShares do not pay a commission to a broker or financial advisor.
They are ETFs, with no sales charges.

You do not understand production requirements, per industry rules, and
misinterpret them using lay standards, which are inappropriate. The NASD
prohibits one to "park" their license. No production is an indicator of a
"parked" license. Low production often leads to other problems, such as
unsuitable sales, churning, etc. The NASD frowns upon part-time brokers.
This is why firms have minimum production requirements.

These production requirements can be satisfied with fees OR commissions, OR
BOTH (with a combination being the most common these days, because everybody
is offering fee-based investment management these days).

Brent D. Gardner, ChFC
Chartered Financial Consultant
http://members.cox.net/brentdgardner1378/

"Be ever questioning. Ignorance is not bliss. It is oblivion. You don't go
to heaven if you die dumb. Become better informed. Learn from other's
mistakes. You could not live long enough to make them all yourself." - Hyman
George Rickover (1900-86), Admiral, US Navy, advocated development of
nuclear subs & ships

The Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU) and Chartered Financial Consultant
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"Andrew W" <andrewsfcaREMOVE[at]yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<MaadnQ67dpxSrKzdRVn2jQ[at]giganews.com> ...
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Devils advocate-

If your parents held these stocks for years and there's a lot of
money, the stocks must have done well. These must be good
companies... selling all the shares may not be the best move.

I invest for myself and don't have the background of others on this
board, but I would atleast consider keeping the stocks (or some of the
shares).

Diversification is important, maybe increase it to 8 or 12 stocks
then. Or cash out half the shares into a money market, and pick and
choose investments for the money markets based on other opportunities.

It's an alternate opinion, worth exactly what you paid for it