How do you pick the stocks that make part of your portfolio, meaning which stocks do you follow on a regular basis? Victor, Hope you won't mind if I jump on you wagon here. I have similar questions, but I'm at an earlier stage of the game. I've developed a few trading ideas and would like to papertrade them. Would an experienced trader or two mind coming forward and suggesting an EOD equities portfolio I could try my hand at? To be as "realistic" as possible, let's assume a very small initial stake, a $15-20k account. Would I then just stick with that portfolio for six or eight months, or a year? Is there a portfolio I could "lift" from somewhere for learning purposes, where smarter guys than I have already picked a basket of stocks, for whatever reasons they get paid to have? Aren't the gurus and pundits always crowing about how well they've done with this portfolio or that? On a related issue, this is a trend-following approach, long and short, and I THINK I'll be right no more than about 40% of the time. If I'm following/trading a group of, say, 20?, 30?, 40? (you tell me) or more stocks, and the method could be wrong 6 times in a row across the entire portfolio, couldn't I take an awful shellacking - theoretically - before ever even hitting my first winner? That could be rough going psychologically, no? How do I handle that kind of risk? Is there some way of phasing my way in? OK, so I'll keep my initial risk on each trade very low: 1 or 2% of my stake on each trade. But other than that, what can I do? It's one hell of a scary prospect. I can't imagine successful traders haven't been over this terrain.