How many stocks should I buy?

From the emails I receive from readers and newsletter subscribers, this is a common question faced by many small investors. Due to limited resources, investors tend to swing from one end of the buying pendulum to the other. They either buy 30 shares of a fundamentally strong stock trading at Rs 500; or, they buy 500 shares of some unknown small-cap trading at Rs 30.

Both can be counterproductive for the growth of your portfolio. With the costlier stock, a sudden spurt to Rs 600 may tempt you to sell out quickly and miss a bigger profit opportunity. The alternative strategy of booking partial profits and holding the rest with a trailing stop-loss may not work too well with only 30 shares to play with.

For the less expensive stock, a 20% gain from 30 to 36 may not seem enough to do any profit booking. So you hold on with the hope of selling only if the stock reaches 50 – which it may never do. In fact, the cheaper stock is more likely to drop to 15.

What is the solution? Firstly, you need a decent amount of capital to build a portfolio of individual stocks. I recommend a minimum of Rs 5 lakhs – preferably Rs 10 lakhs. What if you have only 1 or 2 lakhs? You may be better off investing in mutual funds and fixed income instruments to build up your capital.

What if you do have Rs 5 lakhs? How do you decide how many stocks to buy? The thumb rule in buying individual stocks is: More is not merrier. Keeping regular track of any more than 10-12 stocks can become a full-time activity. You have to remain informed about the overall economy – local and global, individual sectors to which your stocks belong, quarterly performance of individual stocks as well as news flows about them; read Annual Reports; check if dividends are getting credited; apply for rights shares, and a myriad other things.

If you settle on 12 stocks for your portfolio, how will you allocate to large, medium and small-caps? A thumb rule for getting steady returns, protecting downside during bear attacks, plus having a growth ‘kicker’ is to allocate 80% of your capital into stalwart large-caps, and 20% to good mid-caps and small-caps.

How many stocks in each category? Say, 8 large-caps, 2 mid-caps and 2 small-caps. Allocating Rs 50000 for each large-cap, and Rs 25000 to each mid-cap and small-cap stock will complete your portfolio. This is a suggested portfolio. You can tweak it to suit your own style and risk tolerance.

Once you limit yourself in terms of the number of stocks and the allocation of capital to each stock, a funny thing will happen. You will be forced to be very selective about the stocks you pick. That will, in turn, make you more disciplined about choosing the very best stocks – and waiting to buy them only after a significant price correction.

The same Rs 500 stock mentioned earlier was probably trading at Rs 200 two years back, and may drop to 350 after the next correction. Instead of buying 30 shares now, buy only 10 (to help you to track it regularly). When (and if) it drops to 350, buy 130. You will end up with 140 shares and complete your Rs 50000 allocation to the stock.

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Announcing re-opening of paid subscriptions to my Monthly Investment Newsletter

I am pleased to announce the re-opening of paid subscriptions to my monthly investment newsletter for a 3 weeks period from July 1-21, 2011. Only a limited number of subscriptions will be offered – strictly on a first-come first-served basis – to enable me to provide personalised attention and guidance to each subscriber.

If you are interested in subscribing, please send an email to: mobugobu@yahoo.com at the earliest for details. Your email address will be kept in confidence.

The newsletter has completed 18 issues. The past few months have been a challenging and humbling experience for me. It was a challenge to find stocks with growth potential at reasonable prices while the Sensex kept reaching new 52 week highs through most of 2010. The prolonged 8 months long corrective phase since Nov ‘10 has been humbling because many stocks have not performed up to expectations, and yet subscribers have kept faith in my stock picking abilities.

Those who have been following my blog posts regularly know by now what kind of stocks I like, and what type of stocks I avoid. The guiding principle has been to choose well-managed, financially sound companies that give steady (rather than spectacular) returns and have growth prospects.

Non-subscribers may be interested to know how the recommended stocks have fared. Without revealing the names of the stocks (it won’t be fair to my subscribers to do so), here is a brief results table with prices on recommended dates, subsequent high and low prices, and gains/(loss) in percentage as on July 1 ‘11:

Stock	Date	Price	High	Low	Close	Gain/(Loss)
1a	Jan ‘10	206	399	195	374	81.5
1b	Jan ‘10	131	316	120	185	41.2
2	Feb ‘10	78	94	55	65	(16.7)
3	Mar ‘10	178	305	168	236	32.6
4	Apr ‘10	82	116	61	73	(11)
5	May ‘10	171	247	85	125	(26.9)
6	Jun ‘10	101	156	98	127	25.7
7	Jul ‘10	285	305	213	230	(19.3)
8	Aug ‘10	274	434	264	421	53.6
9	Sep ‘10	130	141	95	123	(5.4)
10	Oct ‘10	120	135	89	108	(10)
11	Nov ‘10	101	150	55	71	(29.7)
12	Dec ‘10	53	59	37	48	(9.4)
13	Jan ‘11	91	122	90	116	27.5
14	Feb ‘11	294	329	257	295	0.03
15	Mar ‘11	444	502	405	480	8.1
16	Apr ‘11	107	117	95	105	(1.9)
17	May ‘11	275	280	250	277	0.07

All 18 stocks are small or mid-caps, picked for long-term investment of minimum 2 to 3 years. The fact that some of them are showing decent gains – even after falling from their highs - is a testimony to their underlying strength. Note that 9 of the 18 stocks are showing losses. That gives me a ‘hit ratio’ of only 50% – which is no better than tossing a coin.

But have a look at the ‘High’ column. One stock more than doubled, five gained 50% and every single stock moved up after my recommendations. In a 2-3 year time frame, I expect most of the laggards to make up the slack.

What is important to appreciate is that these stocks were not ‘cheap’ and had already run up quite a bit when they were recommended. The lesson is that even near 52 week highs and subsequent corrective phases of the Sensex, there are stocks available that can provide decent returns. Since the recommended stocks are all regular dividend payers, the actual returns will be higher.

If you need help in selecting good stocks in uncertain times, all you need to do is subscribe to my Monthly Investment Newsletter. Send me an email (at mobugobu@yahoo.com) soon – subscriptions will close on July 21, 2011.

Stock market quiz for new investors – a discussion

Before getting into a detailed explanation of last week’s stock market quiz, I would like to specially thank all the readers who attempted answers. Answering questions in an open forum requires a certain amount of courage. There is always a fear that you may get the answers ‘wrong’.

That is why the answer options were provided in a way that apart from a few obvious ‘wrong’ answers, readers could choose from several ‘right’ answers. This is an important point for new investors to appreciate. If you are going to be successful stock investors, you need to have your own strategies and tactics. If a system or style works for you, it is a good system. Otherwise, you need to tweak or change it to make it work.

Let me provide the answers that I would have chosen – as a conservative, risk-averse, long-term investor:

1 (d); 2 (b); 3 (d); 4 (d); 5 (e), and I will explain why. That doesn’t mean that my answers are ‘correct’ – it merely reveals my investing style, which can be summed up as ‘Safety First’. By the way, there was a typographical error in 1 (d), which reader VJ had pointed out.

Why 1 (d)? Karan summed it up nicely in his answer, and this was really the only ‘correct’ answer in Q1. The other options are too risky. The answer option I didn’t provide was: “Nothing – because I do not buy or sell on tips”. Every one would have chosen that option!

Small investors should stay away from small-cap stocks in general – because of low liquidity that makes buying and selling difficult, and due to lack of financial staying power through tough times. But if you do buy a small-cap, maintain a stop-loss of no more than 8%. A 20% price drop may be a sign of worse to follow – so get out.

Why 2 (b)? Most of you chose option (a), which is not ‘wrong’. As a general rule, don’t average down because you don’t know how far the stock may fall. This is a rule for small and mid-cap stocks. For large-caps – if you have done your homework before buying, a 10% drop in price is a good opportunity to add. (Follow the thumb-rule of never buying near a 52 week high.)

Why 3 (d)? No one chose this option, except Venkat. Most chose (c), which isn’t ‘wrong’. The situation described is called a ‘panic bottom’ – which usually happens during the first or second stage of a bear market. Such bottoms are invariably broken, and the stock tends to fall much lower. So you may be better off by closing the trade, and buying lower again after the stock bottoms out.

In such stocks, it is good to keep a stop-loss between 8-15% – to avoid a 50% drop.

Why 4 (d)? Almost every one chose this option. The point I was trying to make is that investors get hung-up with round numbers. If you buy at 10 you want to sell at 15 or 20. If you buy at 50, you want to sell at 75 or 100. Markets rarely work to suit your convenience. In a low-priced stock – which investors should avoid in the first place - it is better to start taking profits home whenever they are available. Most investors get killed when they go out to make a killing!

Why 5 (e)? Only Saurabh and Joe chose this option. There are two points here. In a step-wise up move, prices tend to find support near previous tops. Those are good places to add. Since we don’t know if 55 was a previous top or not, we would not know if the correction will stop at 55 or fall further.

Also, it is a good idea to take profits at a 52 week high – more so because the original investment has doubled. Remember that you make money only when you sell. So you need to have a selling plan when you buy a stock.

Venkat gets the hat-tip for the ‘best’ answer. His responses suggest that he isn’t a ‘new investor’ any more!

Thanks once again to all who participated in the quiz. For those who didn’t participate – hope you will be able to pick up a few pointers from this discussion to improve your buying and selling.