I've been wanting to get some dividend paying stocks but I'm not sure how much. I'm currently putting 9% of my pretax income into a 401k and about 17% of the wife and my combined after tax income into various IRAs and mutual funds.

Drawkcab said:

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I've been wanting to get some dividend paying stocks but I'm not sure how much. I'm currently putting 9% of my pretax income into a 401k and about 17% of the wife and my combined after tax income into various IRAs and mutual funds.

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The answers you receive should be interesting for you to review but should have little impact on what you do for your portfolio.

It depends on your risk tolerance, goals, time horizon for investing, current sources of income, future sources of income, investment behavior and discipline, amount of time and effort you want to put in managing your portfolio, etc...

For me personally I want to be 100% invested in equities. Used to have large concentrated positions in individual securities but I'm moving away from that. Managing that transition during the current volatility, expect to over the next couple months. Goal is to have approximately 90% of overall portfolio in passively managed vanguard funds (VTI, mid/small cap, international, VIG, and certain sector funds)... the remaining 10% of portfolio will be allocated to individual securities and options trading. The reason for my change is I'm having less time to spend on my investments and want to focus on other parts of my life. The market will do what the market does and its not worth my effort to try to substantially beat the market. I will maintain a small portion in several stocks that I have large gains in and that I feel good about future growth.

Not one penny.

Ever.

0%

I own some nflx and roku. All else is a fund of some sort.

I took about 2% of my cash on hand recently and put it in to some individual stocks. Too much of a chicken **** to risk a lot, so if I lost all of it I wouldn't be too hurt by it.

0

0 as well. I've bought/sold stocks here or there for fun, but own nothing now and won't go that route for retirement.

Less than 5% with no new money going into individual stocks.

401k - 0%
Individual investment account - 90% - learning to trade while WFH. Anything goes. I'm not picky.
Roth IRA - 20%... blue chip stocks with dividends. JPM, RDS.B, etc.

20% of my net worth is spread over 30 stocks and that number fluctuates a little. mix of income and growth. quality names. I'd say another 25% roughly is index funds. 25% real estate and 30% cash right now.

Surprised to see this results

I see a lot of positives to owning high quality Stocks with good balance sheets.

Obviously not appropriate for everyone.

About 35% if my portfolio is in individual stocks.

Of that 35%, I hold a total of 15 individual stocks. None of which are more than 7% of my total portfolio. My 2 largest holdings are Amazon and Visa. Most of my individual holdings are each less than 3% if my portfolio.

3 of those 15 individual holdings were acquired through me and my wife's employee stock purchase programs. All 3 of those companies are large cap companies (>$30B) paying good dividends.

Interesting thread. Surprised by the responses.

I'm about 50%. When I bought them it was maybe 20%, but amazon, nflx, aapl, and cost have tripled, quadrupled, tripled and doubled respectively, so I'm just letting them ride. $37k has turned into about $120k in half a decade.

I'd say 60-70% of my equity portfolio is individual stocks.

When I'm in the market, I'm 100% invested in individual stocks. My rate of return has exceeded the S&P 500 for several years. A little bit of study and research can result in much better results when one owns high quality blue chip stocks.

Less than 5%. Usually closer to 0% than 5%.

0%, have it all in s&p500

Motis B Totis said:

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0%, have it all in s&p500

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Which right now means 21% of your portfolio in Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet/Google and Facebook.

2-5%

87% in LK.

YOLO!

HYC_AG said:

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Motis B Totis said:

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0%, have it all in s&p500

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Which right now means 21% of your portfolio in Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet/Google and Facebook.

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Which probably isn't that bad of a strategy. For simplicity, lets just say say they are equal weight. So 21% split between those 5 names and you have about 4.2% of your portfolio in each. Then the other 79% is pretty well diversified.

HYC_AG said:

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Motis B Totis said:

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0%, have it all in s&p500

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Which right now means 21% of your portfolio in Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet/Google and Facebook.

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Marginal difference when comparing to virtually any US /Large cap mutual fund or etf. Those are the big boys and any fund is weighted heavily in their favor.

sdc177 said:

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87% in LK.

YOLO!

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user name doesn't check out. You should be in SDC. It's flying.

0% of my 403B but I have about 20k in 6 individual stocks in another account

70%

Right now it's 3% but it's normally at ~1%. Had an RSU payout hit during COVID and still sitting on that stock.

ToddyHill said:

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When I'm in the market, I'm 100% invested in individual stocks. My rate of return has exceeded the S&P 500 for several years. A little bit of study and research can result in much better results when one owns high quality blue chip stocks.

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Wrong thread.

nactownag said:

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Surprised to see this results

I see a lot of positives to owning high quality Stocks with good balance sheets.

Obviously not appropriate for everyone.

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There's a whole lot of "high quality stocks" that people have confidently rode to zero or near zero. GE was emblematic of this over the last decade. They were a darling for ages, until they weren't.

To OPs question: I hold no individual stocks in either my IRA, 401K, or brokerage. I am of the school that individual investors have no special information or stock picking ability, therefore I do not have control over my return on investment. I do have control over my costs, and I can minimize those by investing in no-load, commission-free ETFs and mutual funds with the lowest expense ratio possible.

TriAg2010 said:

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nactownag said:

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Surprised to see this results

I see a lot of positives to owning high quality Stocks with good balance sheets.

Obviously not appropriate for everyone.

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There's a whole lot of "high quality stocks" that people have confidently rode to zero or near zero. GE was emblematic of this over the last decade. They were a darling for ages, until they weren't.

To OPs question: I hold no individual stocks in either my IRA, 401K, or brokerage. I am of the school that individual investors have no special information or stock picking ability, therefore I do not have control over my return on investment. I do have control over my costs, and I can minimize those by investing in no-load, commission-free ETFs and mutual funds with the lowest expense ratio possible.

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This. Kodak, Enron, Worldcom, etc. All went the same way for one reason or another. It doesn't matter what stock it is, or how stable it has been for how long. All it takes is to wake up one to a new headline about a scandal, a market shifting new technology, a bad business decision, or something else unexpected to wipe out all your gains and then some. And by the time you read about it in the news with all the other small timers, it's already too late to do anything about it.

Pretty funny Wrighty. I love it!

John Francis Donaghy said:

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TriAg2010 said:

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nactownag said:

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Surprised to see this results

I see a lot of positives to owning high quality Stocks with good balance sheets.

Obviously not appropriate for everyone.

---

There's a whole lot of "high quality stocks" that people have confidently rode to zero or near zero. GE was emblematic of this over the last decade. They were a darling for ages, until they weren't.

To OPs question: I hold no individual stocks in either my IRA, 401K, or brokerage. I am of the school that individual investors have no special information or stock picking ability, therefore I do not have control over my return on investment. I do have control over my costs, and I can minimize those by investing in no-load, commission-free ETFs and mutual funds with the lowest expense ratio possible.

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This. Kodak, Enron, Worldcom, etc. All went the same way for one reason or another. It doesn't matter what stock it is, or how stable it has been for how long. All it takes is to wake up one to a new headline about a scandal, a market shifting new technology, a bad business decision, or something else unexpected to wipe out all your gains and then some. And by the time you read about it in the news with all the other small timers, it's already too late to do anything about it.

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I mean you are talking about 2 of the biggest accounting scandals of all time. Companies that hid massive losses. Before SOX and regulations were put into place. It could happen again but Enron and Worldcom are not your everyday situations.

If you look at the DOW back in 1999, some of the companies are Home Depot, Microsoft, Disney, JP Morgan, IBM, Intel, Exxon, Coca Cola, America Express. Sure there are also Kodak, Citigroup and GE. You always need to keep an eye on the market. There can always be companies that collapse. But typically you can see industries die in slow motion and have plenty of time to abandon ship.

About 30%, all in one stock unfortunately.

BoydCrowder13 said:

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If you look at the DOW back in 1999, some of the companies are Home Depot, Microsoft, Disney, JP Morgan, IBM, Intel, Exxon, Coca Cola, America Express. Sure there are also Kodak, Citigroup and GE. You always need to keep an eye on the market. There can always be companies that collapse. But typically you can see industries die in slow motion and have plenty of time to abandon ship.

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I think the problem - in practice - is that investors are very reluctant to abandon ship from what has historically been a high-performing stock. "It'll bounce back," they say. It's emotionally hard to turn an unrealized loss into a realized loss when there's some glimmer of hope - real or imagined.

I think Boeing is another example right now. They've had steadily worsening financial performance over the last 13 months following the 737MAX grounding even prior to COVID-19. Is that a crisis which will pass or a death spiral to a bailout with shareholders wiped out? I don't think those are obvious decisions to make for individuals.