If you were to stake your entire life savings on 4 stocks, which ones would you choose? Would you add gold to it?

For me it would be:

Larsen.
Infosys.
SBI.
Gold (for hedge).

I will wait for correction to 4000 levels and 4 picks are

- Crisil.
- Gold.
- AXIS Bank.
- INFOEDGE.

Why only 4 stocks, why not 3 or 5 or even 100?

What will be the holding period for these stocks?

A portfolio which is to be liquidated after 3 years will be very different from a portfolio that is to be liquidated after 10 years.

Investing one's life savings into just 4 stocks looks risky to me.

I would prefer a portfolio of at least 8-10 stocks.

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Adding some context to the thread:

Last week I read an article by a Swiss Investment Banker in a magazine lying around in my office library. His key argument was that retail investors take a very casual approach to investing in stocks. His advice was that every stock selection and purchase must be treated as a significant life event. As an exercise he advised people to imagine that they are going to stake their entire financial future in 4 stocks. The seriousness and commitment they would apply in that scenario must be applied to EVERY stock purchase. He did not actually recommend that one should bet everything on 4 stocks ;

I derived my request from this thought process. If people were forced to pick only 4, they would pick only the best. I want to see what people consider as the "best stock".

For the purpose of the exercise, to determine the duration of the investment, assume that we are going to make this investment and retire on its fruits.

Though you have mentioned, again you are not clear on duration. The person 50 years old now would retire after 8 years & 25 years old now would retire after 33 years.

Fruit size would be different based on number of years .

Anyway my first choice is Larsen & Toubro.

Gold though I may buy some but I may not opt as my investment option.

Other than Larsen & Toubro, I have not been able to finalize any other stock yet. The Analysis is still on. Will post updates.

My four stocks would be :

RIL
Larsen & Toubro
HDFC Bank
Infosys

Sorry but No PSU Companies for me. Will depend on their private counterparts.

That swiss banker must have read Buffelogy.

Warren Buffet has been practicing this for last 40 years. He says you have a punch card with 20 punches in life and 19 punches are for buying and one for selling.

He advocates that one should buy minimum companies.

All above companies I named have

- Profit margin above 30%.
- 0 or low debt, thus minimum interest payments
- Minimum capex
- Crisil is doing buyback!
- High cash bounty on books and long term investments!
- Non cyclical or commodity companies.

Gold is for hedging.

Holding period is 20 years or may be never selling!

If you want to invest in four stocks and build a fund for my list will be:

ITC.
TCS.
TATA STEEL.
GOLD ETF.

Mine will be:-

1) NTPC
2) Bharti Airtel
3) Reliance Infrastrucutre
4) L&T

Currently, I have only Reliance Infrastructure in my portfolio because I consider the rest to be expensive.