Bill,

Over this past year, I have reduced the number of individual stocks I hold in my portfolio.  'Ifn you remember, I held about 20 a year or so ago, and am now down to these 6.  The reason is that I have gone to CEFs instead, for diversification reasons.

Regarding FRO, I once held about equal positions in FRO, NAT, and VLCCF, managed in the way I described.  In November of last year, I consolidated into just FRO.  The reason is that NAT and VLCCF had morphed into ship owners, while FRO morphed into ship operations managers.  In fact, FRO manages ships from the other two.  I liked some of the non-transport things that FRO did last year, whenever spot tanker rates were low.  Anyhow, that's what I did, and I described my reasoning in a thread back then.

My current position in NAT is the result of my recent 'experiment' into dividend capture, although I am not really uncomfortable holding it long term, if I have to.

Regarding CEFs, my fund holdings (VWEHX and ADVDX, at the time) were never 'managed' like I did my individual stocks.  VWEHX was always buy and hold.  You will notice that it, alone, provides a basic 4% (of my whole portfolio) traditional rate of withdrawal.  Anyhow, whenever I switched from individual stocks to CEFs, they also went into the buy & hold camp.

"Like I said, 30-80% losses in a single stock are real hard to take and even harder to add more to."

Tell me about it, and we can discuss MMA, WM, and RAS!  8-)

The reason I posted in this thread is that JWR mentioned that my strategy supports a 6% real, inflation adjusted rate of withdrawal, and I wanted to post the specific numbers that supports that statement.  To use common vernacular, my almost 11% yield portfolio supports a 4+7, 5+6, 6+5, 7+4, and 8+3 rates of withdrawal during retirement, without touching capital, as one must do for a 4+3 rate of withdrawal from a 1.75% yield market portfolio.

In fact, apply all 4 of JWRs rules to my portfolio!