Twenty-five Rules of Investing: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25
Editor's note: As a special bonus to TheStreet.com readers, we have compiled an updated version of Jim Cramer's "Twenty-Five Rules of Investing," from his book, Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World.
Don't Own Too Many Names
Rule 11
In my years as a hedge fund manager, I spent three hours every day analyzing the mistakes of the day before.
That was my major task, one that I completed before anyone else came into the office, generally between 4 a.m. and 7 a.m. I would analyze every losing trade — you don't need to analyze the winners, they take care of themselves — and try to figure out how I could have made more money or lost less money.
I was maniacal about it.
And after a couple of years of this, I realized that good performance could be directly linked to having fewer positions.
I never will buy a stock without first taking one off. That's a great discipline and one you should adopt, pronto. All the bad money managers I know have hundreds of positions. All the good ones have a few that they know inside out and like on the way down. That's why I say:
Don't own too many stocks.
I know it can be constraining. For instance, I might like several stocks in the chemicals group, say, DuPont (DD - news), Dow Chemical (DOW - news) and Eastman Chemical (EMN - news). But my discipline leaves room for only one, so I would own the one that I thought was the cheapest and the best.
When I lost the most money as a hedge fund manager, by the way, my "sheets," my position sheets, were as thick as a brick. When I made the most money, my sheets were, well, one sheet of paper, double-spaced. And I ran hundreds of millions of dollars.
Please remember that whether you are a pro or an amateur, you can always have too many positions.
At the time of publication, Cramer had no positions in the stocks mentioned.
Jim Cramer is a director and co-founder of TheStreet.com. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com's sites and serves as an adviser to the company's CEO. Outside contributing columnists for TheStreet.com and RealMoney.com, including Cramer, may, from time to time, write about stocks in which they have a position. In such cases, appropriate disclosure is made. To see his personal portfolio and find out what trades Cramer will make before he makes them, sign up for Action Alerts PLUS. Watch Cramer on Mad Money at 6 p.m. & 11p.m. ET weeknights on CNBC. Click here to order any of Jim Cramer’s books including his latest endeavor Stay Mad For Life: Get Rich, Stay Rich (Make Your Kids Even Richer). While he cannot provide personalized investment advice or recommendations, he invites you to send comments on his column by clicking here.
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