<<tonight 4/22/ 98 tmf sheard suggests that only 5,000 to 10,000 be invested in the foolish four yet
on another occasion he intimated that the foolish four was a good investment vehicle for ira
accounts. i just opened an ira with 20,000 and plan to fund it max contribution yearly. this will far
exceed the recomended...>>

Hmmm... I didn't interpret his comments with any "only" in there. What he said was:

"Even four stocks alone is too concentrated a portfolio for my sleep-factor. Once you get up to a level of about $5,000 or $10,000, I feel you have to begin diversifying into other stocks as well to avoid putting too much emphasis on any one stock."

How I interpreted that is that once you get a couple of thousand in each stock, you can BEGIN to buy other stocks before adding to what you've already got. So if the IRA is part of your total portfolio, your diversification could occur in the other parts of your portfolio. If your IRA is most of your portfolio, you could either have FF and some others in the IRA, or you could choose a different course than TMF Sheard!