Advice to those attempting to manage their own stock portfolio.

A short quote from  Satyajit Das's excellent book:  Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk.  Excellent advice for those who attempt to own individual stocks and manage their own stock portfolios.

"Bernard Baruch, the famous financier and investor, once offered the following guide to investment success:
If you are ready and able to give up everything else, to study the whole history and background of the market and all the principal companies whose stocks are on the board as carefully as a medical student studies anatomy, to glue your nose at the tape at the opening of every day of the year and never take it off till night; if you can do all that and in addition you have the cool nerves of a great gambler, the sixth sense of a kind of clairvoyant, and the courage of a lion, you have a chance."

Das, Satyajit (2011-08-04). Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk (p. 98). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.