Curators are responsible for assembling, cataloging, managing, and displaying artistic and cultural collections.

Imagine you’ve been hired as the curator of the Miles Davis definitive exhibition. You’re responsible for assembling, cataloging, managing, and displaying his powerful and everlasting body of work, produced during a career that spanned some 47-year period. According to Wikipedia, his major discography consists of at least 51 studio albums, 36 live albums, 35 compilation albums, 17 box sets, 4 soundtrack albums, 57 singles, and 3 remix albums. You have to decide what comes in and what goes out. Packing his entire work into a single room is like turning the exhibition into a warehouse.

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is the world’s largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its ≈2,400 listed companies at US$21.3 trillion as of June 2017 (Wikipedia, again). Finviz has 7,410 securities listed on its screening tool.

The point we’re trying to make here is that your job as a trader is exactly that of a Miles Davis curator. You will be selecting a handful of securities to compose your portfolio. You have to decide what comes in and what goes out and what to do with each one of the selected. Packing dozens of securities together is like turning your portfolio into a sinkhole that will drain your money and time out.

Think of yourself as a curator. The curator’s job is to say no. Yours too.

Learn to say no.

Chart of the Day: Curating your portfolio

Say you want to build a cashflow portfolio. Your plan is to sell puts to buy the stocks at a discount and then sell calls against them. On top of that, you want to receive nice dividend payments. How to build such a portfolio on a small account when there are 7,410 stocks available on the Finviz screening tool? That’s an important skill you have to develop as a trader: being a curator.

Video of the day: Using Stock Scanner on Finviz

Coaches Matt, Gino, and Noah talk about their favorite indicators on Finviz.

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