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Pierre PERRINE's avatar

I am new to the feed. I like the strategy, looks great. Now instead of building up a portfolio of 4 stocks and waiting 7-8 years to start options, would it not be more profitable to build up a portfolio on only 2 stocks and the cash position, do the option trades and invest the faster (I think) profits to buy the other 2 stocks ? Then do options on all 4.

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Mike Thornton's avatar

Good thinking! You're absolutely right - concentrating on 2 positions gets you to 100 shares way faster.

But there's a trade-off - you're taking concentration risk when your portfolio is most vulnerable. If JNJ gets hit with a lawsuit or KO faces some health scare you feel it hard with no diversification. The most vulnerable phase is when portfolio is still small.

The compromise could be focusing on 3 positions instead of 4 - JNJ, KO, and O for example. Skipping MAIN initially. This gets you to options faster while keeping some sector spread - healthcare, consumer & real estate.

Your instinct about acceleration is 100% right, but I wouldn't sacrifice risk management for speed

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Pierre PERRINE's avatar

Thanks. Looks good. What do you use for tracking ? Your charts look like personalized xsl.

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Mike Thornton's avatar

Everything you see is heavily customized. I use thinkorswim with RTD to automatically feed live data into Excel. The traffic light system, the risk classifications, the layouts - all customized to reflect my decision-making process and make the educational narrative as clear as possible, since many people are new to this

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Wade Lander's avatar

What do you think about PFE at the moment?

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Mike Thornton's avatar

PFE's in an interesting spot right now. To me it looks like a classic value trap setup. Cheap for a reason but the reasons might be overblown. Pfizer doesn't expect major vaccine policy changes in 2025, and Trump tried similar drug pricing moves before—courts blocked them. I'd consider it a small position in the Value bucket but not a core holding. The dividend looks safe and any regulatory resolution could provide nice upside.

But I'd position size accordingly because this isn't JNJ-level stability

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