[dragonwriter]

> But consider this: If, when you were young, you bought a few $1000 of Microsoft stock, Apple stock, Google stock, ect, when they went public, that investment could have grown to be the majority of your life savings.

And if you did it in lots of other promising stocks at the same time, it would have been a major error.

If you have reliable information from the future, sure, it makes sense to dump your life's savings into one basket that is going to pay off. Or if you are young and your “life’s savings” is a trivial fraction of even your annual surplus income, it might make some sense to take an all-in risk speculatively. But, generally, it's a bad idea.

[ghaff]

Yep. To give a specific example, a lot of people (many of them employees) had a significant portion of their savings in Enron stock.

[gwbas1c]

Well, putting all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea.

But when it comes to investing, a little knowledge of economics and a good sense of smell goes a long way.