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Strategies & Market Trends : Stock Attack -- A Complete Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gersh Avery who wrote (23718)	5/29/2000 12:28:00 PM
From: Oak Tree	Respond to of 42787

There are probably more stocks that I wish I'd held than that I'm glad I sold. I'd be rich vs just well off. Buy and hold is a good method, I do that for my retirement. In the mean time I still think I will time something just right and get rich. Greed.

To: Gersh Avery who wrote (23718)	5/29/2000 12:45:00 PM
From: Dan Duchardt	Respond to of 42787

Gersh, Thanks for the link to the Brinker Club. I have heard of Bob, but can't say I know a lot about his market views. I'm not a perma-anything. Bulls and bears come and go, and my focus now is figuring out how to take advantage of either condition. That has taken me into some day and swing trading, learning all I can about options and strategies for using them, technical analysis, etc. that I knew nothing about a few years ago. I'm relatively new at this whole business, and come to it from some horrendous experiences with market professionals who have done nothing for me but lose my hard earned money, so we are probably not far apart on our views of "the market". However, my experience, and what I see going on around me does lead me to a different perspective about the future of the market. I agree with you that buy and hold is seldom the optimum strategy, but there are periods of time, often lasting for several months when it pays to ride the trend. As always, we see those times perfectly in hindsight. Forecasting them is a bit more problematic, as evidenced by our different views of what will come. I don't doubt your data on market overhead, but much has happened over the last several years that I believe will change that picture dramatically. In particular, the combination of automation of stock transactions and accounting, with the accompanying cost reduction, and the "enlightenment" of individual investors like you and me who have recognized that we can do as well without the friendly broker/underwriter pushing us into buying and holding highly overvalued stocks, will lead to a decline in the market infrastructure you talked about, and the overhead will decline too. It only takes a handful of people with technical expertise to keep the computers running to handle millions of transactions every day. We no longer need to call the broker and pay him huge commissions to handle a few orders a day. I agree with you that the influx of money from the baby boomers has been a major factor inflating stock prices over the last several years. My guess is that cheap, nearly instant access to the market by individuals is the primary cause of the astronomical flights of the "new economy" startups. It is equally responsible for their rapid demise. Enough people have been burned by this recent correction so that when it ends (it will end someday) the survivors will probably take a harder look at the risks of investing their money in profitless companies. I expect most of the companies you mention with decent earnings and low stock prices are going to be rediscovered before too long. As drsvelte pointed out in his reply to you, the majority of boomers are still making money and putting it into retirement funds. Most of them are not going to be content with 6% returns because that will not get them where they need to be for retirement. They will still accept some risk for a higher potential reward. For some considerable time to come, IMO that means money flowing into the market. What will happen in the post boomers era is speculation on both out parts. I don't expect I've convinced you, and you have not convinced me, but that's what makes the world go round. If we all agreed, there would be no market. Dan