If you take the time to read his story, youāll find that his wife works and he has no ties to his home (US) as his father left the family when he was 8 and his mother committed suicide when he was 21.
I linked his blog to this thread to highlight the strategy of a portfolio with over 100+ stocks.
Personally, Iād be happy with the yield heās getting, but dividend income investing is only part of my own overall strategy.
Youāre right I didnāt read it - as soon as I saw FIRE, a monetised blog and $14k a year I turned off.
But now youāve told me his wife still works itās the cherry on the cake! 
One thing I can agree on is FT makes it viable to have a portfolio with hundreds of stocks as dealing fees would make this impossible on most platforms.
Warren Buffett said, āDiversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing.ā
Yet, he holds 60 stocks in his personal portfolio.
By stocks do you mean publicly traded companies only? Or are you including in that group of 60 the companies BH has a 100% ownership like Seeās Candies or Duracell?
The number of tradable stocks is lower than 60. Still high, above 30 or 40 I think.
The BH privately owned businesses are many, around 60. Dig a bit and youāll find that heās invested in an handful of sectors, namely: Finance and Insurance, Manufacturing, Energy, and a few others.
Also, many of the positions were acquired decades ago at favourable prices following events with negative impacts on the prices of those companies. Examples: American Express or Coca Cola.
He tends to keep his positions below the 10% threshold for regulatory reasons, although at times he goes beyond it.
He has a massive bankroll and avoids some sectors which he considers outside his circle of competence.
I pretty much doubt his diversification is protection against ignorance. I think itās more likely a result of is tremendous success, and the resulting fact he has an enormous pile of money to allocate
Firstly, heās an avid supporter of ETFs, so Iām not sure this quote is taken in the right context.
Secondly, we are not Warren Buffet, so weād be dumb not to diversify.
I do find the whole āhow many stocks is rightā quite comical to be honest 
I personally have lots but follow news A LOT and have a basic understanding of the fundamentals of most companies I invest in. What I do religiously follow though are my many interlinked spreadsheets that follow each company in many different ways.
Itās too complex to explain here but in principle I never get to much of one company and generally only buy extra when a dip is in place and always re-invest my dividends instantly. I am not interested in popular stocks and only bought a small GME, COIN and ARB just to be involved in the discussions 
As I have many base stocks I get frequent dividends and this actually makes me think āoh maybe I will just add some more cash to round that number upā each time I re-invest the dividend. This to me probably means my pot will grow X amount more than not using this system.
I have 5 rules to decide which stock to buy and they include are they in a dip? Are they looking good long term? X? Y? and Z? and donāt let emotion decide
That being said I do believe the biggest reason people lose out is simple really and that is buying popular/peaking stocks. Also, greed is probably pretty high as well I aim for 10-15% and am not interested in more as a driver which means I can play in a safer environment. Will I become an instant millionaire? No, but I will increase my holdings at a very enjoyable rate
Is many better than few? I would say both plans can work well but the player needs to ensure they are actually watching their stocks values and NOT get involved emotionally.
Anyhow thatās just my 2p worth
The benefits of diversification seem to plateau at 20 stocks. Iām happy with 10 stocks as my portfolio is not very large
That is RISK % and not very sensible stat to be honest as it really depends on what 20 stocks someone buys 
If someone buys 20 crypto then this is 100% BS stat
Actually, itās quite accurate. Risk is split into unsystematic risk and systematic risk (market risk). Only the former can be reduced by diversification, thatās why it canāt go below the market risk line in the image. In academic circles 17 is usually quoted as the threshold where diversification decreases unsystematic risk so little that itās not worth buying more stocks for the reason of diversification alone.
Itās about stocks, not crypto. So youāre right there.
OK put another way buying 20 stocks in crypto companies or 20 in a gas guzzling industry or very high risk is not where risk plateaus. This is a generic argument that wonāt really work on all case and my point is people do buy stupidly and can easily buy 20 stupid stocks
Edit - and the chart says RISK and my point was that the below is a wrong take-away. There are more benefits than just RISK
Trying to match the potential future returns of trackers would mean index investors stay consistent and follow a strategy because history hints that this decade āmayā produce lower gains yoy. So selling at the wrong time or not buying the dip could potentially wipe out the gains of that year.
So with that piece of speculative non-provable insight going forward, the case for building a diversified position of 10-25 solid dividend growth stocks seems legit. At least, you really, really have to know the potential future valuation of the company & sector purchased.
My personal aim is for no more than 4 etfās and 12 individual stocks coupled with a longterm strategy.
Buffetās comments are great reminders that if you know what you are trying to achieve, even one or two stocks can kick you into space. I mean, look at Elon and many others, they have like one investment and go all in.
Itās not an intuitive concept at all, I agree. Risk here is volatility/variance. But you could show all this mathematically.
Since we can only decrease unsystematic risk or risk that is based on microeconomic decisions, this even applies to an all out oil portfolio - the decrease may be a little slower, but it still applies. This is based on the mathematical fact that adding more stocks with lower than perfect correlation lowers the volatility/variance. And since itās microeconomic (company specific) factors that are being targeted, there canāt be perfect correlation between assets. This means any form of diversification lowers unsystematic risk and by that lowers total risk.
Diversification is pretty much the origin of investing, the limited liability company was largely created to satisfy the desire to gain the benefits of trading ships while minimising the risk associated with the loss of a particular vessel.
Through partial ownership of multiple ships investors could gain exposure to the systematic risks of trade (macro demand, supply etc) and the rewards that come with that while mitigating the risk of a single vessel being lost at sea or a particular cargo becoming worthless.
I think there is some confusion here as the subject of the thread can be interpreted as:
For the former itās worth bearing in mind that BRK has trailed SPY (and I know thatās the toppiest comparison to make) by ~37% these last 2 years. So by not having broad exposure you need to be comfortable accepting the risk of significant underperformance, no matter how good you are.
For the later, I think itās hard to research more than around 10 stocks and itās easy to gain exposure to the rest through ETFs.
I think this quote is good, but everyone who reads it probably thinks āIām not ignorantā regardless if they are:
Compared to the aggregate knowledge of all market participants everyone is ignorant to some extent. So I agree with the quote, but perhaps not the originally intended meaning of it.
This includes prices going up 
Whenever the āshould I diversifyā question comes up, diversification proponents are always quick to give the Buffett quote ādiversification is protection against ignoranceā - but I always feel itās used the wrong way, as if owning more than ~10 stocks makes you ignorant - which I wholeheartedly disagree with. Personally, Iāve always took it to mean āitās better to own 15 great businesses than 15 great ones plus 15 okay ones. BUT itās better to own 30 great businesses than 15 great businesses.ā In one of his oldest interviews, I vividly remember him saying āif you buy great businesses for less than theyāre worth, and you own a bunch of them, you basically canāt loseā - a cheeky reference to the benefits of diversification and value, if you ask me.
And another thing: Is it just me, or do Investors naturally diversify anyway?! If there were only 5-15 businesses I liked, iād grow old waiting for buying opportunities - I often find myself forced to sift through the market a bit for value. On the other hand, Iāll never be one of those investors that has 100+ companies in my portfolio - there simply arenāt that many great businesses (that I understand) out there.
If you can realiably pick 15 great businesses then why not just pick the single greatest business and put all of your money in that for maximum gains?
Because every company can have sudden unexpected catastrophes that could seriously disrupt the business, so putting all your eggs in one basket is far riskier than investing in multiple businesses.
Exactly. Who is to say that the 15 that you have picked are truly great?
Unless you have a crystal ball 30 great businesses isnāt really any different from 15 great and 15 okay businesses. Both are good because the diversification spreads the risk. The businesses that are okay might even outperform the great businesses.
I think the point about the 15 is that it takes a lot of time to properly research companies enough to have the edge over other people, so I think itās a compromise between having a small number so you can spend enough time to ensure theyāre still quality picks and large enough for diversity in case one has big problems.
Specifically, heās saying that if half the companies are just average because you didnāt research them well, theyāre pulling down the rest of portfolio where you did put in the effort.
As you get to riskier companies, you need to diversify over more companies, because you might be looking for 500% growth in one company and the rest failing entirely compared to stable markets where you might get 0-20% growth across all of them.