<< Had I held to this day my original position in MMG and GGC and not gotten fancy by trading or looking at other stocks I would be up MUCH MUCH more $$$ than now.
I am holding the ones I think are good. I have to quit churning. When I trade I never give things enough time to work.
Each time I sell 5-10K of MMG and then buy back 5-10 K of MMG my timing sucks. Same as on the others. >>
That's why I rarely trade any more and instead just hold the good ones for the long term and accumulate more on dips. That's what Puplava recommends when investing in juniors. It's very hard with the volatility, but patience gets rewarded. Big drops during corrections no longer bother me.
Puplava gave the example of ARU, which is by far his largest position, dwarfing all others. It went up by 8000% from March last year to November, but he didn't sell out on the way up. He just held on, even as it surpassed others in his portfolio by a huge amount. He held on through the drop in 2004, 2005, and early 2006, and now his patience has been rewarded. I doubt many here would have had the patience to hold that big of an ARU position through all that, but that's how you make the big bucks in the juniors.
I've taken more of this Puplava approach whereas I used to trade very actively. It's worked wonders for my portfolio, stress level, commission costs, and tax bill. With long-term gains for us Americans taxed at 15% vs. 35% for short-term gains, it makes a lot of sense to stay focused on the long term and defer paying Uncle Sam as long as possible.
I heard a study once showed that nearly all the richest people in the world got there by NOT diversifying -- they focused on great opportunities and made the most of them. Once you achieve your goals and want to protect the downside, you need to focus more on diversification, but if you have lofty goals, the best way to get there is by not being too diversified and to hang on to the best opportunities for the long term. Diversification gets oversold by the mutual fund industry and keeps a lot of people from achieving outsized gains. It protects you from losing too much on the downside, but it also prevents you from gaining too much on the upside. |
