If you’re organizing your stock watchlist in one giant list, you’re doing it wrong. As a retail investor, it’s important to keep yourself organized to make investing as simple as possible. This starts with organizing your stock watchlist.

Try using 5 lists to categorize your stocks in:

1. Scanning: Whenever a new company catches your eye, add them to this list.

2. Interested: Your scanning list can become long fairly quickly. This list helps differentiate which companies should be taken more seriously or require closer attention.

3. Trigger-Ready: You might have a stock that’s too expensive or you’re simply out of cash to buy. Save this list for the companies you’ve researched, want to buy, but just need a better price. This list also:

• Prevents you from buying impulsively.
• Forces you to compare different investment opportunities.

4. Main Portfolio: This would be a list of your purchased investments. If this list gets too large, you can also separate it by types of investment (i.e. long-term, speculative investments, ETFs, etc)

5. Sold Positions: Here, you’ll see the stocks you’ve sold. This way, you can keep track of your sold positions to learn from any mistakes.

When it comes to investing, there’s no one-size fits all. This framework acts as a skeleton where investors can add sublists or lists in between.