Saul,
Thanks for the prompt reply. I don’t hold stocks that I think will only go up 20% in a year, I hold stocks that I think will go up at least 20% in a year. My quandary is about whether I should sell them in order to reinvest in stocks that might perform better - or might not . . . Of course this is true for every investment decision, so maybe there’s something going on at a deeper level that I need to ferret out???
As for options, I’ve pretty much arrived at the same place you’re at. Despite the fact that they can boost a portfolio’s return by 10% - 15%, it’s a lot of extra effort and one more thing to pay attention to that comes with a built-in deadline. Since I retired, I don’t like deadlines (actually, I didn’t like them before I retired either). And I guess I hadn’t given it much thought before, but it is a zero-sum game. I don’t like to play those kind of games even if I do come out the winner.
Just out of curiosity, do you have a lot of outside interests and activities or is investing pretty much it? I have been making an extra effort to get on top of my investments this year, but I find it really difficult. First, the things you often say only takes a few minutes - well, that may be true if you have a body of information established and you’re just adding to it, and the company is kind enough to report non-GAAP numbers that you agree with. But if you’re starting from scratch, and you don’t know if you agree with the non-GAAP reporting, or there ain’t any or it’s in a foreign currency and you need to convert to USD and need to look up historical exchange rates for when the company reported the last x quarters, etc. Well, the whole exercise is very time consuming.
And I’m sort of a modern Renaissance man (that’s probably an exaggeration) but I’ve got a ton of outside interests and activities. I’m currently rebuilding my very large deck because the (expletive) guy who built it originally use standard lumber and it had become dangerous due to rot. This is work I do myself, I don’t hire guys to do it. I play guitar in a band. I build and repair musical instruments. This year, I’ve started a vegetable garden with my wife, I started by building frames for raised beds. I’m planning an East coast trip to visit my daughter now living in Connecticut with her new husband, but while back there, NYC, Cape Cod, Washington DC. And so on . . .
My former wife said I’m this way because I’m a Gemini. My current wife is Chinese, I’m now a pig, so that can’t be it. Point is, where do you find the time to focus so much attention on investing, or is it pretty much the only thing you focus on?
