I don't believe anymore in people being able to assess stocks. What I remember from the last years in this forum were very strong and regularly repeated recommendations for Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Carmax, Hershey and Google. I pity everyone who followed any of those recommendations as apart from Google all others went down dramatically since those recommendations.

You make a good case. Most people likely know very much less than they think they know about individual stocks, and that certainly includes me. It has taken me many years of diligent study to appreciate how little i kn ow. Maybe when it does work it's mostly luck and a rising market. It seems obvious with hindsight that Berkshire would just keep adding value year after year when we invested, but that too is just hindsight. It *wasn't* (and isn't) a sure thing.

But part of that luck is the dates/prices of entry and exit. Of the five you mention, I've made enormous amounts on three, roughly flat on one, and a loss so far on the last, so overall I'm happy with the luck of that list.

The loser, Carmax, is up 40% in the last month. So who knows, it might come good yet : ) --I still like the business, and I'm stubborn. Because of sundry options my breakeven is $28 lower than it was a couple of years ago, so maybe the two will trends will cross over.

Dollar Tree and Alphabet are the two stocks from which I've made the most money over my investing career, other than Berkshire. I have no position in either at the moment.

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But back to the notion that folks can't assess stocks: that makes the case for a "shotgun" approach that much stronger. Avoid concentration risk and stick to an index, something like an index, or a broad KISS quant slate.

(by KISS I mean really dumb stuff. The tried-and-not-true things that don't work to pick individual stocks often work just fine to pick *sets* of stocks. An equally weighted portfolio of the 50% of cheapest (lowest P/E) stocks the Value Line database beat the S&P by 1.5%/year in the last 25 years, and the most expensive (highest P/E) ones lagged the S&P by -2.8%/year. So...just buy a whole lot of the entire better half?? Or everything but the worst 10%??)

Jim