I would like to draw people's attention to my thoughts specifically point 4 I make in
this thread.
Portfolio size should be loosely determined by what our investment strategy is. We need to conclude whether we want a solid foundation of income generators we stick with as our bread and butter over the long term, whether we want to twist with any slightly riskier shares to make a profit by selling and what the composition of this is. Only then do we know what our objectives are, when we have achieved any of them and how we progress.
Thus, say for instance we did wish to do what I suggest for example sake, the objectives might be as follows:
Baseline objective : Grow portfolio to include 4 income generating and up to 3 profit generating shares
1) Purchase next income generator share
2) Purchase next profit generator share
Baseline objective : Exit from profit generators
1) Continually review the 'climate'
2) Set exit conditions
3) Sell when exit conditions met
Baseline objective : Monitor income generators
1) Continually review the 'climate'
2) Set exit conditions (all shares have their price no matter what...)
3) Set purchase conditions (when we think the price is attractive)
4) Set a purchase preference (i.e. which share we would prefer to buy if conditions are right for more than one)
5) Purchase / Sell when conditions met
Baseline objective : Create potential purchase list
1) Review FTSE250 for potential purchases for both income generation and profit generation
2) Build a priority list for each
3) Set purchase conditions for every potential purchase on each list
If we have all the above set, do some reasonably sound research we can set and review thresholds for selling and purchasing. Once agreed we can then avoid timewasting polls. This would make us more strategic and all us to react to favourable market conditions, especially if we have cash in our account as kevinchess1 noted.
The key to the above is setting out a good plan, with these threshold numbers and doing good research. We also then need to have confidence in what we have decided and go with it