What Percentage of Money should you have in Shares?

Had interesting thought... it wouldn't matter if you had 'too much money' (percentage wise) in shares as long as they went up and did well. You probably shouldn't invest money that you think you might need in the next 2 years... but had another thought. It'd be much better to buy shares that went up then have to sell them in say 1.5 years rather than have lousy rate of interest. So I guess I'm talking myself into SELLING some shares for the first time in over 7 years if I have to. Note there are none I would sell atm!

Adding to this after a bit more thought. Of course... the shares can go DOWN. So really the longer you can afford to leave them the better. And it also matters how much time you can spend on shares to an extent. If you're working full time you may find it difficult to buy and sell when you need to- although you could still put in buy and sell limit orders. The better you are at understanding shares the shorter time frame you could have...

But anyway, I would recommend my readers if they can afford it to have at least some money in shares. You have to know what you're doing, but it really isn't that hard. Read my Fool posts and other Fool writers. I have some more posts written too- I'll be writing about shares that I own at least at first. Probably for quite a while though.