If you're interested in one view of long-term investing take a gander at this Fool article: fool.com
From the piece: "At the present moment, it's unlikely that successful long-term investors are spending much time talking about the hit that the Nasdaq composite has taken this year. More likely than not, they're not talking about how much money they could have made if they had only invested their money in the year's high-flyers instead of the year's dogs. In fact, there's a very good chance that they are not even talking about the events of the past year at all. That's because these things are plainly obvious to everyone.
What really interests successful long-term investors today, as always, are the areas in the market where things are not-so-obvious. "
It's always reassuring to me when I own stocks that my casual acquaintances have never heard of or at least don't know what the businesses sell. I've yet to literally talk to anyone beyond the folks I've come to know online who know what Qualcomm sells. Using the same subset of people, I've never known anyone who has heard of Siebel Systems or the sub-industry in which they compete. They've never heard of Gemstar and though they might have used at least a basic version of an EPG, they don't know what it's called. Only one person knew the name, EMC, and he owned shares. A lot of them have known the name, Cisco Systems, but they didn't have a clue about what the company sells. I've never asked anyone if they know about SanDisk because I've only owned the shares for a couple months.
Clearly, that reveals that my friends don't know much about technology. (They've been associating with at least one too many carpetologists. :) But that's part of the point that the author of the article makes -- the companies I invest in are not obvious to my friends because, despite that technology is changing our lives, they don't have a clue about the businesses that are shaping how we as human beings use technology to interact with each other.
--Mike Buckley |
