Saul.
I had the same question when I started.
My solution was, NO REAL MONEY! I grabbed your port and threw it into the Motley Fool Caps game and watched.
After a year I had read the annual reports listened to the conference calls and was ready to invest.
At that time my wife and I sat down and invested in two or three of your positions that we simply could not not invest in. Over the course of the second year we went from 100 percent cash to 100 percent invested.
At this time, because it is what I think I can sustain, we are 75 percent invested and 25 percent cash. (This is a matter of my own head games)
I have been burned before. The awesome thing about this board is not the stocks, it is the training, the training to evaluate, and as importantly, to move. Training is not like education. Training takes practice and disipline.
No one is going to be good when they start so leaving room for error is critical.
Cheers
Qazulight
(The account that I first started with is up over 100 percent in less than 2 years and this acount has only been fully invested for a few months. Additionally I have held stocks too long and chossen a loser or two.)