Warren Buffett: How Many Stocks Should You Own In Your Portfolio?

if someone in your local town owned three to five different businesses say a cake shop maybe a dry cleaner you'd probably say that there are a pretty well diversified business person yet when it comes to investing in the stock market experts suggest holding upwards of 20 to 30 different holdings now in today's video I'll share with you guys a clip where Buffett shares his insights on diversification I'm curious what your guys's thoughts are on this topic so leave a comment down below on how many stocks you think you should hold in your portfolio if you guys enjoyed this video be sure to give it a thumbs up and I hope you enjoy the quick clip my name is Mark hey I'm from Scottsdale Arizona and I am very interested in your policies on diversification and also how you concentrate your investments and I've studied your inner reports going back a good number of years and there's been years where you had a lot of stocks in your marketable equitable securities portfolio and there was one year where he only had three in 1987 so I have two questions given a number of stocks that you have in the portfolio now what does that imply about your view of the market in terms of is it fairly value that kind of idea and second of all whenever you it seems that whenever you take a new investment you never take lesson about 5% and never more than about 10% of the total portfolio with that new position and I wanted to see if I'm correct about that yeah well on the second point that there that really isn't correct we we have positions which you don't even see because we only listed the ones above 600 million in the last report and obviously those are all smaller positions sometimes because that's because there's smaller companies and we couldn't get that much money in sometimes it's because the prices moved up after we bought them and sometimes it's because we may be selling the position down even but so we have no there's nothing magic we like to put a lot of money in things that that we feel strongly about and that gets back to the diversification question no we we think diversification is as practice generally makes very little sense for anyone that knows what they're doing the diversification is a protection against ignorance I mean if you want to make sure that nothing bad happens to you relative to the market you own everything there's nothing wrong with that I mean that is a perfectly sound approach for somebody who who does not feel they know how to analyze businesses if you know how to analyze businesses and value businesses it's crazy don't if tea stocks or 40 stocks or 30 stocks probably because there aren't that many wonderful businesses and that are understandable to a single human being in all likely attended and to have some super wonderful business and then putting money in number 30 or 35 on your list of attractiveness and forego putting more money into number one just strikes Charlie and me as madness and it's conventional practice and it it may you know if all you have to achieve is average it's uh it may preserve your job but it's it's a confession in our view that you don't really understand the businesses that you own you know I base I mean I'm a personal portfolio basis you know I own one stock you know but it's a business I know it then and it leaves me very comfortable yeah so you know do I do I need own 28 stocks in order you know I have proper diversification you know and be nonsense and within Berkshire I could pick out three of our businesses and I would I would be very happy if they were the only businesses we owned and I had all my money in Berkshire now I love it the fact that we can find more than that and that we keep adding to it but three wonderful businesses is more than it's more than you need in this life to do very well and the average the average person isn't going to run into that I mean if you look at how the fortunes were built in this country they weren't built out of a portfolio 50 companies they were they were built by someone who who identified with us with a wonderful business coca-cola is a great example a lot of fortunes have been built on that and there aren't 50 Coca Cola's you know there aren't 20 if their words would be fine we could all go out and diversify like crazy among that group and and get results that would be equal to owning the really wonderful one but you're not gonna find it and and the truth is you don't need it I mean if you had a really wonderful business is very well protected against against the vicissitudes of the economy over time and and and competition I mean you know we're talking about businesses that are resistant to effective competition and three of those will be better than a hundred average businesses and and they'll be safer incidentally I mean they there is less risk in owning three easy to identify wonderful businesses there than there is an owning 50 well-known big businesses and it's amazing what has been taught over the years and Finance classes about that but I can assure you that that I would rather pick if I had to bet the next 30 years on the fortunes of my family that would be dependent upon the income from a given group of businesses I would rather pick three businesses from those we own than own a diversified group of 15-month Charlie yeah what he's saying is that much of what is taught at modern corporate finance courses is twaddle [Applause] you want to elaborate on that Charlie [Laughter] you cannot believe this stuff I mean it's a Modern Portfolio theory and it's it has no utility but I mean it you know it will tell you how to do average but you know I I think anybody can figure out how to do average in fifth grade I mean it's just not that difficult than it'sit's elaborate and you know there's lots of little Greek letters and all kinds of things to make you feel that you're in the big leagues but it there is no value added I have great difficulty with it because I am something of a student of dementia I classify dementia now on some Theory structure of models but the Modern Portfolio theory it involves the type of dementia I just can't even classify something very strange is going on if you find if you find three wonderful businesses in your life you'll get very rich and and if you understand them that bad things aren't going to happen to that of those three I mean that that's the characteristic of it by the way maybe that's the reason there's so much dementia if you believe what Warren said you teach the whole course in about a week mm-hmm yeah and the high priest wouldn't have any edge over the lay people and then that never sells well

Channel: Beavis Wealth

Views: 1,051,127

Keywords: Warren buffett, warren buffet, diversification

Id: H3Q8a9imiFs

Length: 7min 48sec (468 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 11 2019