F,
I am very curious about investors willingness/ability to learn and apply new methods of investing/trading such as AD's scalping techniques or Cary's trademarked patience, selectivity, and scale down buy discipline. OT1H, investors tend to do the majority of their experimentation in their youth, and have already learned what works or does not work for them. OTOH, there has never before been a medium for exchanging direct knowledge like this thread.
May I ask you and the thread in general to comment on whether and to what extent they may have been influenced to change their investment styles based on the results they have seen Cary &/or AD achieve?
For myself, though I am 49 and have been investing directly since I was 13, I have been keenly influenced by these two. But I have a proclivity toward experimentation, even though I realize there is a price to climb aboard the learning curve. As my commissions decrease I intend to do more scalping, although it may be quite a while before I can attain AD's scale. As for Cary's approach, scale down buying during big declines is the ultimate test of confidence. Confidence is a function of knowledge, which is a function of experience.
Of these two methods, AD's is much more difficult to emulate. For one thing, it is highly dependant upon scale. AD can only do this because he knows that the results of his 3,000 and 5,000 share trades are not going to affect his lifestyle. Try it with 500 shares instead of 5000 and you may see 30% of your profits eaten by commission.
Cary's "buy when there is blood in the street" discipline sounds deceptively easy also, but entails calm buying during periods of maximum panic. It also disguises alot of hard work in stock discovery. Cary says that he rarely invests in a company that he has not followed for at least 10 years.
As different as these two are, what distinguishes both is their common commitment to transparency, i.e. posting trades as close as possible to RT. Revealed preference says that the walk is more important than the talk. That is especially important in this medium where we tend to only rarely meet one another.
To help remedy this, I am hoping that we can one day have a thread party. Since so many of us are already in the Northern California area, that might mean a get together along the coast this summer. Maybe we could do this in conjunction with Semicon West (July 20, 21 weekend). semi.org
Perhaps company tours might also be arranged.
Again, I solicit your suggestions, comments.
Sam |
