RE: Long-term market swings
Truff,
About buy-and-hold worlds, it's not the buying and holding
that's aggravating, it's the stagnation of the price while
you're holding that is. If you buy and the stock price
continues to climb and climb and climb, you go to bed
cheering every day. I know. I was there with Iomega
in the first eighteen months of its meteoric rise.
Of course, I'm congenitally buy-and-hold anyway, so
maybe I'm blind to something here. I know that a
tenfold increase in my investments in a year and
a half was enough to get MY adrenaline running just
fine without any options or other artificial stimulants.
One thing you should remember, though, and that is that
the market's performance in the last several years has
NOT been typical. Don't get too used to it, because some
day, I have no idea when (maybe when the boomers start
cashing in their retirement investments), things are
gonna change. When they do, you'll be darned glad to
buy and hold a stagnant stock. That'll be considered
above-average performance. Thinking that through now
can give us all an advantage when it comes to developing
a strategy for coping with the situation.
Cheers, Tom (long IOM) |
