Hello. Please excuse the long preamble and noobish content. I've flagged the important bit below, if you want to scroll to the point of the post.

I'm at a stage where my poker bankroll will soon be bigger than I really need. I can divert some of that profit into adventures at limits that I'm not really good enough for, but I feel I'd be well advised to divert at least some of money into the stock market.

I have a part-time job which involves reading the finance sectors of UK and US newspapers. In the UK, most of the major broadsheets carry a stock tips section.

All in all, I see about 25 tips a week in the course of my work. This is useful information, but some tips will be more useful than others, and I'd like a way of ranking it.

- - - - - - WAFFLE ENDS, POINT BEGINS - - - - - -

I'm planning on keeping a spreadsheet, keeping track of these tips. It's going to become quite large, quite quickly, so I'm only going to update the figures in it once a week. Not ideal, but otherwise it's too much work. The question is -

How long should I keep track of each individual tip for? Clearly you'd expect to see some fairly quick return on a Buy or Sell recommendation, but if the tip is to hold a stock in expectation of improved results or dividends, how long should you wait before you write that tip off as bad advice?

I'm currently planning on holding the info for six months. Does this sound absurdly short-termist?

Sorry again for this probably foolish post, but all answers/advice will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers.

clemon.