<<Trading to me is the only game in town. I lost to much money on buy and hold ever to do that again. >>
IMO the old concept of buy and hold and sit on the beach is gone for the major stocks. Must find mid or small caps to have a chance.
Good example is Msft with 10.8 bil shares outstanding and trading 65mm shares per day.Trading alone might remove $65 mm per day from market cap, not to mention the cost of options grants which go the employees.
Looks like avg loss for last 4 years about $12/sh since muct was bought at over $40/sh
Past performance and company reputations are being used by brokers to churn, as noted by the fact the big companies can have 10 or 20 repetitious news items per day to attract attention
Most noted on Dell, Csco, Hpq, Orcl etc. Beware of big names.
I thought the war would change things but last two days convinced me it has not. Watched the defense stocks go belly up, and the brokers getting sold on good news. Best attitude is to assume the bears and churners are still in charge of prices.
This is not all bad news as one can play the channels and make more than holding - when in Rome, etc
It has taken years to have this sink in and learn even some simple concepts , since it is so appealing to
take what appears the easy way and just find one good stock to hold forever. Wmt, hd, low, F (?) , how are they doing ? Gold? Oil?
In the bad times I am down to 4 or 5 stocks, when I get more than 8 or 12 I now know my confidence or bullish attitude is too high and am due for a crash. Time to sell or go short.
I really dont know the answer for people who cannot spend hours per day studying the market , if they have a comfortable sum or retirement income, perhaps company bonds are the answer.
I dont think much of of the funds , since the recently successful and touted ones are the bears who just had a good three years and are due for a spanking. Going back over three years and the successful one were into techs like Janus and it will take a long time to get another rurn like they had. The best fund of the future has no reputation to go by yet so we dont hear much about it.
Regards
Sig |
