[meditate89]

How many stocks do you need? 90% of my portfolio is in 5 of them.
I don't believe that you need to check on your stocks every day or even every week if you just want a better return than index funds. I check my watch list every other day to see if anything good is on sale, but I certainly don't spend a lot of time running numbers every day, or trying to predict what may or may not happen in the next month or the next year. Once you discover and acquire your target business, it'll keep running itself whether you pay attention to it or not!

I honestly think it can be done in 10-20 hours a month... but only determination and due diligence will help you here- I'm not suggesting you go read the paper, see the picture of the pretty Iphone, and go buy AAPL for $97. That doesn't really count as research.