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Gold/Mining/Energy : James Dines -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MSI who wrote (94)	10/20/2001 10:45:06 AM
From: The Barracuda™	Respond to of 102

Have not heard from him for years

To: MSI who wrote (94)	11/13/2001 3:40:42 PM
From: Brian Moore	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 102

Last I heard Dines said he regretted holding a few core net stocks. To be fair to the man, starting in Jan, 2000 he put stops on almost all net stocks, and kept tightening them as the weeks went buy. As a result he was stopped out of many with profits. But he held four key holdings, in case he was wrong. Later when these stocks, like CMGI, plunged, he admitted the mistake, saying it was a violation of his "Wolfpack" rule ... That whenever a few stocks in a specific industry group rise or fall, the rest in the pack will too. The bottom line with Dines is he likes to follow big trends, likes to look into the future and figure out what the trends will be. Then he talks and talks and convinces you of how brilliant this strategy is. Well, sure, it's pretty good. And he's smart and fun to read. But the real, real bottom line is that over the long term, like the last ten or fifteen years, he has not been able to beat the market. This is not a criticism of Dines in particular. I still like the guy. The point is that all of these experts, with all there experience and all the time they put in ... are not able to beat the market. Some appear to be doing so for a while, but then things go bad for them, or it turns out they are being too risky, so eventually things will go bad for them. It is certainly true there are a few who have beaten the market over the long term, making nearly 20% a year on average, and if you follow them for another ten years they will probably continue to do well. But Dines is not one of these people. And certainly 99.999% of people on SI are not beating the market long-term. They're just having a little short term success. Even 1000 monkeys picking stocks will have 10 or more that beat the market over five years. So what? Are you going to follow the advice of one of these monkeys? The only things that make sense are either putting your money in a broad index fund and leaving there for 20 years, or finding someone who can prove to you they've beaten the broad market consistently over a very long term -- at least ten years, and then leave some money with them for another ten years so you can let their superior skill work its benefit for your over time. About the stupidest thing you can do is try to invest yourself, following stocks on Yahoo and SI, relying only on your "talent" and the "talent" of the _unproven_ people who post little messages on Yahoo and SI. For a few people this will work for a while, and they will convince themselves they are skilled investors. They will exhibit the AMAZING ability to ignore the fact that they are getting getting better returns than true experts who run mutual funds, and that this has to be due to luck -- not skill. They will be blissfully unaware of the meaning of risk, not knowing their investment style is too risky and that so far they have dodged the bullets, but that this cannot last. So they will think they are really smart. But it won't last.