(Moaning included, watch out) ~ Back when Intel was 49, as you and I remember so well, Alex, I wanted to "invest" in companies, ideas and production that will "build the future". Because, basically, someone will. Look at how silly that sounds now. It's still what I want. But I have also discovered that the way the market is invested and "played", it's doing less and less sorting of value, real valuation, and more and more "positioning". I know this has always been true, but it seems approaching the only truth now.
Position, not investment, outweighing all the other forces. So that it becomes difficult to invest at all, because the macro-forces drag even good, growing companies, back and forth like a dead man in the tide.
Until now, I've always picked individual companies to invest in, "good
ones" like Adobe, Sun Micro, Pair, HMTT etc; but it's becoming impossible to do that because of the forces dredging the macro market. Any company except the largest fluctuates wildly, not on it's performance so much as it's.....position, again. "Position" being the sum of the forces of the brokerages, mutuals, market makers, players, and PR machines.
I can't be alone in the feeling. Why bother investing? Why does Amazon exist? Why do the biggest 100 companies get the funds, other than the fact that the mutuals and brokerages know that's where they have to be to fulfill their prophecy?
Research and assessment cannot compete against this. For the longer term investors (1-3-5 years, let's say) patience and diligence may not be rewarded at all. Again, because of the larger forces, the Titanic of Tunnel-vision.
And then, the inevitable result, fear. Because the market hasn't been doing it's job. Now we get "interfearance", justly deserved.
This is not the place to spawn. I don't think investors are going to get in, until the scenery changes; that we hit a peak. And it's not good for things as a whole.
Then again, so what. Hee hee. I've got a box of Chianti and my fiddle. (I dislike watching years of history waste themselves.)
ooops, jmho |
