Thanks for the smart reply Yummy. Thing is, I do care, very much. But many years in the market have taught me that high reward doesn't have to be high risk (depending on your definition of 'high reward', of course). I've held Macquarie, Magellan, Corp Travel Management, Cochlear, Goodman Group, Resmed, Seven Group and CSL for many years - all big healthy companies that aren't as sensitive to sentiment as spec stocks are. The returns have been steady and sometimes stellar. Obviously some of my holdings have been sh!te as well - I went on an agricultural detour a few years back which has been a disaster but could still improve, I held some telcos which are all in the toilet but certainly not dead, and I sold out of resources just as they were coming good, but in the same timeframe I've seen a dozen market darling high risk / high reward specs shoot the lights out, then go straight down the dunny. I've seen people 'bet the house on x' and then promptly lose the house. Too many times to mention. I followed BIG all the way up on HC, and all the way down again - so many people lost so much money because they over-invested in high risk / high reward. And I realised some time back that spec isn't just high risk - most often it's straight-up gambling. You can do all the research you like, but you never really know the whole story, and you're way, way, way too beholden to sentiment. One very important person leaves a business like CSL, you get a small dip. One very important person leaves RAP, for example, and you lose 25% at the open (a made up number, but you know what I mean). I didn't form this rule due to lack of experience. On the contrary, I formed it on the back of decades of experience. I might only have a smallish portfolio at the moment, but in the meanwhile my portfolio has paid for houses, kids educations, etc. On the whole, I would say that my strategy has served me well.
I'm really liking RAP, as I've mentioned. But not one person here can say, for 100% sure, that SC-C mk II is going to be positive. We all feel it, and I truly hope it is, but none can say for sure. We all know what happened last time the study was a miss. So it's a gamble. Heck, it's basically the definition of a gamble. And I've decided that I'm only comfortable rolling the dice on 1% of my porti.
