Sure, I picked a timeframe that suited my point. However, you seem to forget that Spooner's advice is to pick a single stock. What if you pick KO or JNJ in 1999? These are not techs and there was no indication that they will have problems for 10+ years. Do you believe that holding them another 20 years would rectify low returns in the first 10 years? It's very hard to catch up once you've fallen far behind.
Yes, I added another criterion: "attractively priced". Because if you don't, you get 12 years of subpar performance. This might be OK in diversified portfolio, where other stocks will potentially negate your few hold-forever underperformance. But IMHO in a concentrated portfolio 10 years of subpar returns are pretty deadly. Especially, since there will be a tendency to bail out just as the stocks become cheap, since they have not moved anywhere for so long.
But overall, I don't care. I don't plan to hold a single stock. And I don't plan to hold a single stock of overpriced company even if it was KO. So, yeah, I will miss some huge runups like HANS (renamed MNST: finance.yahoo.com ). But I also won't get stuck in 10+ years of going nowhere. Or at least if I do, I will know that I am holding something that is undervalued. |
