Jim,first I agree with you that buy and hold is the best investment style.At the very least,it's the best style for me.I don't ski but if I did I'd prefer cross country to downhill. I'm most influenced by Benjamin Graham,Burton Malkiel and St. Peter L.,who by the way,is a very strong advocate of wandering through malls looking
for investment possibilities.I'm also a strong believer in sifting through mountains of information on a regular basis to make sure the story is still there on the stocks I'm holding.You never know when a tornado will hit.
Besides the uses for TA I mentioned,I also think TA as used in momentum investing ,market timing and 'bear' manipulation,etc. is responsible for a lot of the increased volitility in the market (just an opinion).And I think this creates inefficiency in the market,particularly in the small-caps,where industry standards like the S&P Reports are less than circumspect in their coverage and all kinds of insider manipulation takes place.I think we can get a better idea of where to buy at on downtrends and maybe a sniff of insider trading or something affecting
the issue that neither the fundamentals as we know them or TA can explain.Like Andy Grove said about semis,"you got to be paranoid to survive".Particularly in this market that seems the analysts and media want to turn into a bear market with the sheer volume of dire predictions written.But you're right in the long run the stock of RAIN will reach its fair market value on the basis of evolving fundamentals.And tracking those fundamentals is the majority of our business as investors.I also agree that anybody that trades solely on TA is from another solar system,so to speak.But it probably is useful in screening large numbers of stocks to a small group worth investigating the fundamentals of.Market predictions even short term are like weather forecasts,some people are better at it than others and they generally have corns on their feet to help with the high tech stuff.The average success rate is probably about 50%.
By the way how does PZZA pizza compare to Uno's taste-wise.
I think the Vegas and Atlantic City RAINS success (or failure)-the gamblers lust test, together with managements ability to open on time thru Atlantic City will be the final hurdles to test RAIN's soundness.And each step of the way there is going to be a dwindling but more desperate population of bears making margin calls.I think I saw I.5 million shorts listed for RAIN in the IBD.
Dennis |
