The thing is- speculative stocks are the only way to make...

The thing is- speculative stocks are the only way to make serious money and if you only have 10% of your portfolio in them (and then spreading the risk further across that 10%) you're never going to be generating large returns on average across the year. I suspect PL is correct when it comes to his personal portfolio, as he's probably got a few million in the bank already (and if not he should have, considering how much he gets paid and the different companies he's been involved with!), so a nice 10-20% average yearly gain amounts to a very nice income indeed for him. I would of course do the same if I were in his position (maybe one day, lol).

But for those starting with a pot of only a few thousand quid, a 10-20% gain a year doesn't really amount to that much. You need to invest in more speculative stocks at the start to build up a pot of cash where a 10% gain in your portfolio over a year is a decent bit of cash.

I wouldn't neccesarily say all speculative stocks are high risk anyway mind you- IMO it's more to do with when you get involved in these stocks. Buying an oil explorer just before drilling results is obviously very high risk, but if you take a position a few months early in anticipation of the hype that will arrive when drilling takes place, you can turn a profit with relatively low risk that in some cases even exceeds the upside potential upon positive results (an example being our Range shares- from 4p to 20p (a 500% increase) just by sitting and waiting through the seismic, helium surveys, and mobilisation plans- yet even if the first drill is successful, there won't be a 500% upside from this point based on that one drill alone. I realise Range is a bit of an extreme case but to a lesser extent you can see the pattern of rises towards drilling taking place across loads of companies (on AIM anyway, not sure about ASX).

Still, if I ever get to earning as much cash as Landau, I'd probably only have 10% in speculative stocks too! Nothing is ever truly safe though- e.g. BP fell 40% last year based on that Gulf of Mexico disaster.